It's a new dawn, it's a new day . . .

This weekend at Bristol was pretty emotional, and very up and down.

Saturday morning I played an entire game of chess with a very serious 8-year-old boy. It was probably the highlight of the entire weekend for me. I don't get to play chess very often (read: never) and I originally sat down to play both sides for a few minutes; I was going to sit in the dirt and make a few moves before getting up and heading into the glen, hoping someone else would find the board and pick up my game where I left off. Instead, a little boy sat down on the bench near me and started, silently, to play with me. I kept expecting him to get bored and leave, but after several minutes I realized he was very good and very serious, and I had to start really planning my moves in advance. By the time he checkmated me, we each had about three pieces left on the board. He put me in checkmate, I knocked over my king, and we shook hands. It was awesome;) I hope he enjoyed it too; I'm sure he's never played chess with a faery before!

Two of my friends also got engaged on Saturday, and I am probably going to be making the wedding dress. There were a lot of other very lovely moments too, children who smiled and played, adults who were pretty cool, tiny moments of grace.

But, there were some low points of the weekend as well. There was an incident with one of the faeries on Sunday where a drunk, belligerent patron hit him and security had to intervene. Several people fell ill and went down from the heat. And, it finally began to hit me that this is all ending next weekend.

I was at morning meeting on Sunday, listening to a few people starting to say their goodbyes for the year, and it suddenly struck me that next year they would all be back here, doing it all over again, but I wouldn't be. I would be leaving, and no matter how often I come back to visit, it will never be this way again. My summers will be filled with other things, and they will hopefully be lovely things, but they will never be Bristol. Bristol will hum along quite happily without me, but I wonder how happily I will hum along without it.

Needless to say, I needed to straighten out my makeup after that.

I know next weekend will be hard for me, and there will be many moments like that, and probably a lot of crying (I'm starting to tear up just thinking about it). But, I will get through it and I will go forward, somehow, and on into the next phase of my life.

But, I will dearly miss the phase I am about to leave behind.