Fourier Analysis is a mathematical tool which can do a number of things: separate out signals from noise; help identify patterns or trends in data; filter out all unwanted data and focus on a single signal; use approximations to make generalizations; make approximations of real world signals (think electronic music); combine harmonics to get a stronger signal. That's what I'll be trying to do here!! Won't you join me with your comments?

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Letting Go...

Summer is over. Maybe not officially. Maybe not according to the weather in your area. But here, the rains and winds have arrived, and the only soft fruits available on the markets are some pale, imported strawberries and hard but not very sweet nectarines. We are fortunate with our blackberry bush in the backyard that will keep giving my DDs their daily snacks until November. But they ripen more slowly as there is less sunlight on a daily basis now.

The change in this part of the world is very noticeable. Already there is a chill in the air and leaves have started turning and falling in anticipation. I am cold already! For a little while longer it will still be light in the mornings when we get up, but that will not last. We get a short reprieve with the change from the Daylight Savings Time, but as it doesn't occur until the last Sunday in October, (25th October this year) it almost seems like too little too late. By the end of this month it will get darker and darker in the mornings, dawn arriving almost an hour later than it does now.

And as if the weather, the length of days, the lack of soft fruit selections and my aching bones were not enough to indicate that summer is gone, the kids have started back to school! While I have actually thought I looked forward to this (as do so many Moms!), somehow this year I am a bit melancholy. You see this year DD2 started in middle school. She was so excited and has taken the change in venue and routine as a new adventure. Unlike with DD1, she was not at all afraid and not lacking in confidence in any way. In some ways she is a lot more mature than her older sister.

And that, I guess, is my source of anguish. I have lost "my baby". She appears to be wiser and smarter than I think of her. Her favorite phrase lately is "I know Mom!" And she does. And I knew this day would come and have tried to prepare myself. But I find myself mourning for the loss of her childhood just as much as I do the end of the long, warm, lazy summer days...

My Granny, my mother's mother, used to say, "Raising kids is a series of little deaths and letting-go's". I guess she knew what she was talking about.

3 comments:

Goofball said...

yes daylight savings time is fairly late but I'm mostly glad we get the evening light as long as we possibly can. But boy it sure felt chilly last week. I don't like the summer to go!

Good luck to both DD1 and DD2 at school!

Jen said...

Your Granny was a wise woman. It's hitting me over, and over, and over again this year that we only have two years left with my son. It's just killing me right now.

soccer mom in denial said...

Wow, your granny was spot-on. What a terrific granny-ism.