Long shadows

This evening, the penultimate evening of July (it's still July 30th here in Victoria), I walked out in the fresh breeze and caught sight of my own shadow stretching several yards to the east. As a child in Edmonton, I remember delighting in the length of my evening shadow which made me appear not only grown-up, but gave the illusion that I was wearing high heels.

I don't have my journals here; they're back in Hades, so only long shadows of July memories occur to me as I walk: summer band, teaching summer ESL students, reluctantly picnicking with picnic-mad elder daughter when she was little, walking barefoot (until I trod on a bee at age eighteen), my first boyfriend, being led through a pitch-black forest by another boy when I was nineteen and encountering stoned hippie-types (I assume they were hippie-types --- they certainly sounded stoned), weddings, my very first funeral.

July is the month when I feel the year turn around to loop back to Christmas. It is usually the month when I see which way the year is going to go. I am sometimes relieved; sometimes horrified. Shadows can be threatening; they can also be shelters.

I feel relatively sheltered this year. I hope I'm right.