Fall is in the Air

The same beach that was crowded with noisy picnic crowds and laughing children only a week earlier was looking a little forlorn today as I descended the shade covered path.  The sand was cool and soft beneath my flip flops and I shivered slightly from the fairy breeze that ruffled the leaves overhead.  The sun was high in the sky and the water beckoned with its usual carefree dance of windswept waves and foam.  It was such a short summer with so much rain and so much to do that I'd only been out a couple of times this year.  I dipped a foot experimentally in the water and was bitterly reminded of the shortness of the season.  What was I doing that was so important all summer long that I'd neglected this beautiful treasure of balmy winds and diamond waters?  True, it was only Lake Erie and not some tropical paradise but the basic elements all combined to the same effect...the constant wooing of water on the shoreline while gulls chorused overhead and the wind that conspired to make nonsense of any well thought-out hairdo.  With a sigh, I headed further up the beach away from the tumbled seaweed that scattered the shoreline and laid out my quilt.  Suddenly the well organized life that had seemed so important to me was utterly ridiculous in contrast to the bounty of God's beauty that lay unappreciated and silent.  As if waiting patiently for acknowledgement and the inevitable smile of bliss that followed any of His elaborate handiwork.  I stretched out and felt the tension of the morning melt out of my shoulders as the sunshine kneaded the knots out of my tired body.  I opened my library book and fell to reading like a word starved librarian, allowing myself to be transported in to the world of Grisham where football players roamed the streets of Italy and ingested ungodly amounts of carbs and espresso.  I was on the Ligurian seaside pleasantly idling the day away until a deep voice shattered my solitary reverie.  Yes...what was a pretty girl like me doing reading on the beach, of all things.  As though I should have been better occupied cleaning a cottage for darling little diamond miners and supervising the rabbits as they licked the dishes clean.  Indeed!  With a straight face I informed him I was waiting for my fiancee to roll around.  Not that I had one yet but then...he didn't need to know that and one never knew what was waiting around a bend in the road.  He ambled off less enthusiastically than he ambled on and I snickered into my book with self satisfied delight.  Maybe I should have been less acerbic and found a more polite way to answer.  Maybe they would invent chocolate with all the nutrition of an 8 quart basket of mixed vegetables and none of the calories.  Maybe I should have had a V-8.