HAVE YOU EVER LOST AN ENTIRE SUMMER?

We've all lost a bill or a set of keys, but have you ever lost an entire summer...?

This is not some study in creeping dementia. The summer I lost was in my youth when the powers of your memory are supposed to be at their height. However, memory and meaning can be two very different things.

The meaning of that particular summer was vividly present before me each day, and yet it was my very youth that failed to understand it. While I still had it. Try to remember if something like this ever happened to you. Or perhaps to your country.

For me it was a serendipitous amalgam of moments never again to be repeated. What makes the meaning of such moments so elusive is you're living them so furiously you never quite understand them. My parents were still here and healthy...my kid brother was still single and living at home...I was newly married but still only Sunday dinners away from them...my new wife and new-borns were still caught up in the great mystery of fresh life...my first teaching assignment was still a thrill-a-morning...my first shattering wake for a peer was still some years to some...the Camelot some of us believed we had elected to the White House was still young and alive...the economy at home and the peace abroad was still secure despite the occasional fearful headlines.

Maybe you've had a summer something like this. Where everything and everyone is still in the place you've assigned (or at least hoped) for them. But you see, that's the problem...! Because they are where you feel they all should be, they're complacently taken for granted. It's only the thunderstorm that makes you savor the sunshine, it's only the raw Chicago winters that help you appreciate the lush summers, and it's only war that reminds you how peace must not be presumed.

When that lyrical Chicago summer slipped into fall, it was the usual transition from one stability to another. Only stability is never a guarantee; all too often, it's simply another taken-for-granted. Within the next several months, so much would change. Dramatically. Tragically. Sadly. And, no, those words are not just my words. All too often, they are the dictionary of all lives, for the book's author is not us.

Whattaya like...? Words like Fate, Kismet, Destiny, God...? I'll take anyone of them as the one that helps give meaning to my lost summer. But please get this straight -- this isn't written to ask your sympathy. More to invite your attention.

Whichever summer of your life you're living right now, take the time to look at it. A little longer, a little more affectionately, and a lot more aware of the irrevocable law of life that states: each one comes only once.