Beauty In The Waning Days Of Summer

This coming Tuesday, at exactly 5:18 pm Eastern Daylight Time, autumn arrives in the Northern Hemisphere.

As the days grow shorter and the evenings become noticeably cooler it's wonderful to have another opportunity to photograph roses in The Writer's Refuge.


It's most appropriate, I suppose, that I should be able to take pleasure in the waning days of summer from a rose bush that was a gift to TheSpecialOne from my buddy, Al.

I took a shot at writing the final installment in the Last Road Trip series about the time the sun was coming over the horizon this morning, but it didn't come together for me.

Considering how much of the story I've written already it shouldn't be so difficult to conclude.

The challenge comes from wanting to tell the story in such a way that people get to know Al and to live through the experience I shared with The Master Baiter while, at the same time, keeping aspects of it private.


Once I decided to set aside any serious writing for the day I went out for breakfast; New York strip steak, a three-cheese omelet with tomatoes, green peppers, onions and bacon, home fries, sour dough toast and a few St. Pauli Girls.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home.

While I was in the produce department, near the front of the store, I saw a little boy walking through the floral department without an adult. That's something that makes me nervous so I did a quick scan and saw a woman I believed to be his mother at the customer service counter.

When I looked back to the little boy he was checking out balloons they have on sticks, in the shape of different cartoon characters and such. He didn't just grab one; he was talking his time walking around the display looking at what characters and shapes they had.

Finally he grabbed one and went running over to the woman. It looked to me like she was finishing up her business and I walked over to check out the price of the balloons.

The woman waved off the little boy; not because she didn't want him to have the balloon, I thought, but because she didn't want to deal with it.

He came walking back, with his head down, to put the balloon back in the display.

I was standing next to the display and I asked him if he wanted the balloon he had in his hand. When he shook his head yes I went to hand him $3. He looked at the money, then looked at me. Take this money and go buy the balloon for yourself, I told him.

He took the three dollar bills from my hand and set down the balloon.

I asked him again, do you want that balloon? He shook his head yes. I picked up the balloon and went to hand it to him. Take that money and go buy it for yourself, I said.

The woman, meanwhile, was still dealing with the clerk at the customer service counter.

The little boy took the balloon and the money and started walking back over to her.

At that moment I realized that I had made a mistake. Giving the little boy money to buy a balloon when his mother had waived him off wasn't the best idea I ever had.

I walked over to the woman; getting there about a second after the little boy did...just as she was finishing whatever she'd been doing.

Excuse me ma'am, I said, I saw the little boy wanted that balloon, so I gave him the money to buy it.

She got the biggest smile on her face. She thanked me enthusiastically and told him they'd have to go over to the check out counter to pay for it.

I was happy, of course, that what I meant to be an act of kindness didn't turn out badly. Nothing could have made me happier than the joy on the faces of that little boy and his mom.