End of Summer Festival

 
These are from two weeks ago, at the Summerset Festival that celebrates the end of summer. We went with R's best friend E.

We went for the dog competitions. Agility, Flyball--all the events that border collie owners like to watch to get ideas how to keep our own dogs occupied. The frisbee dogs were so much fun to watch. The pure joy and the soaring and the effortless catches, which you know took months and months of training before it looked effortless.

They spent a lot of time at the dog adoption stations and were careful to pet every dog. They said they were looking out for ones that seemed lonely. There was a lot of sadness about the dogs we couldn't take home, especially in the car on the way home.

Remember the petite Sno Cones of your youth? They got about one-third of the way through these.

We ran into a little friend from school, who had just added to her Pillow Pet collection.

And we were so happy to come across our neighbor friend playing bass with the kids' band on "Rhiannon"!

There is a corner of the park with a giant old weeping willow. The girls spent most of their day climbing the smaller trees around it and playing underneath it. I kept waiting for them to pull us back towards the rides and the festival, but this is what they wanted to do.


 The park is right next door to Columbine High School. The girls are walking back to our car through Leawood Park, where people congregated and injured kids were treated right after the Columbine shootings. This is the first time we've been here, although we live not far away. It was strange to see Columbine High school for the first time when there is carnival music playing, and kids running everywhere and laughing. You find yourself looking around for the scenes you saw on the news, the pattern of windows. It's not here. It's not here today. Is it good or bad, that waves of life just wash over this ground and mute the history underneath it. Life is fleeting, and today I am grateful for a sunny September day in the park. While I was there, I thought of the kids' voices and music as a celebration that the victims and families would be happy to see.

I lost that completely on the way home. I had a strong impression that moving past what happened there is a privilege that belongs only to people who lost someone close to them. I think we are not meant to give it only a glancing thought, "oh what sorrow took place here." On the way home we said Our Fathers and started a Rosary, but it still feels like I left something unfinished behind.