August is a longing.

Here we are, somehow. August has arrived, swollen and warm-blooded. I swear I remember the cherry blossoms arriving just yesterday. I swear last week it was only May. But that is how time in summer moves. Slow, drawn out, and dizzying, all at once. The light is stretched to its longest all year, lingering at the farthest edges of the sky. And yet, we can’t seem to get enough of it. Yesterday evening, as the red sun dipped behind the mountains, I held my face upwards.

Just one more hour, one more hour. Let it last, let it last.

And that is what August, and perhaps all of summer, has become for me.

A longing.

My longing for time to untether itself from its incessant ticking and simply stand still.

In summer, our days are softened. They are mostly unstructured, a fluid space, more welcoming of spontaneity. My boys have been living in their imaginations, long past dinner time, out in the garden. They are firefighters at breakfast, covered in dirt and monster truck drivers by late morning.

And my daughter, she is growing before my eyes. Her first tooth is jutting out of swollen gums. This week, she said “mama” for the first time. We were driving in the mountains, a crystalline river dancing its way with us.

I can’t buy enough peaches. The cherry tomatoes from the farm stand taste like candy. My son eats a plate of them. Their juices drip down his chin and little fingers.

Just one more hour. Let it last. Let it last.

And then, another longing.

My longing for the inevitable tidiness of fall and school. For everything to become a little more orderly, a little less chaotic, a little more predictable. So that I can anticipate my days. So I can work on writing my next book. So I can work on healing my body after 6 years and three kids (this deserves its own post—more soon). So I can continue to chase my dreams with more intention, more attention, more time and energy.

And there, too, another longing. To watch my children grow and learn. To witness, with awe, a human soul becoming itself. To let them feel and touch and taste and experience this wild and precious life. I dream of the questions they will ask me, the moments when they will need me to sit with them in their ache, the words they will string together that will astonish me and challenge me and grow me.

Longing.

That’s the word I keep coming back to.

I wonder if this is truly the tender work of August: to learn that we can long to hold on and long to let go, all at once. To learn that longing is a relative of loving, and that we long because we love what we have so deeply, and we know that it cannot stay. To learn how to stand inside of the ache of the present and just be there. To learn how to gather the last of the light knowing we cannot truly hold onto it or keep it. But the memory of it—this, this we can carry into winter. This we can warm ourselves with come January. This is what we can hold, for however long we have left.

Let it last. Let it last.

The rest of this month's letter (including a poem, links to Things for Softer Days, my favorite summer pesto recipe, and this month's writing invitation—is for paid subscribers.