We know about summer. We’ve known about summer from the beginning. As children, summer and its magic etched enduring marks into our memory—the roller skates outside on hot pavement, the car packed for beach trips, the swims in cool, freshwater lakes, the longer days, campfires, fireflies, fireworks, and, of course, so much more ice cream than we ate the rest of the year. It’s a special time, and we understand that pretty early on.
And then, quite possibly, we forget it. Adulthood and its demands have a way of making us forget the sparkly for the monochrome, the singular for the necessary. I’m not blaming you, or myself, but I am saying that as I write this, the good news is, we still have time: It’s only mid-July, and a good amount of this fleeting, dreamy, delightful season remains, as does time to renew your vow to enjoy as much of it as you can, piece by piece, hot moment by hot moment, one bug bite, one splash of ocean water, one ray of golden sunshine, one scoop of vanilla ice cream, one slice of berry pie, one sliver of sweet watermelon at a time.
Are you with me?
For my family and I, spring was a bit hectic, with some hefty moments heaped onto our plate, and not necessarily stuff we felt like eating, but that’s life. I realized we were partway through June and here was summer, ready or not, and what was I going to do about it? Was I going to continue to focus on worry, go hard with the to-do lists, the errands, the workload, or was I actually going to lift my eyes and look up and enjoy the season.
Of all the seasons, summer and autumn are particularly fleeting, and each has its beauty and wonder, but only summer actually has a let’s-all-take-a-break mechanism built into it. Summer asks us to put up our feet. It’s designed to invite us to change our routines, press pause on the norm. It asks us to linger over moments; to enjoy nature, with its unfrozen lakes and warmed oceans, with road trips, visits, barbeques; it’s the time to enjoy what’s growing out of the ground, special in its season (this is the only time of year to really properly enjoy watermelon, blueberry, strawberry, eggplant and tomato; the rest of the year what you’re eating is just an imposter.)
I made a quick list of things I wanted to spend my time on over these brief, beautiful months, not with frenzied, must-get-this-done energy, but with the energy of giving myself permission to relax, to simply enjoy the act, to be creative, which it may come as a surprise to you, I struggle with giving myself space for, as if being an adult means being productive only and being creative doesn’t “count.”
I don’t know that I’ll get to all of them everyday, or maybe even before September rolls around, but I like the idea of this new “to-do list” and its billowy, yet hands-on feel.
In this spirit, my husband and I decided to take a road trip with our three-year old. A last minute, spontaneous, pile into the car and enjoy the ride kind of trip. As I write this, I should really be packing, but I’m not going to worry about it too much. It’s summer, we’ll stop and pick up what I forget, turn the music up and enjoy the scenery together. We’re heading to the Smoky Mountains and looking forward to seeing them for the first time. I bought a new throw quilt, and I’m going to keep it with me in the car on the drive, nice and cozy, along with some pens, notebooks, magazines. I love to read magazines, but I also like to cut out images that speak to me and arrange them in journals and collages; a creative act I haven’t made much time for as of late. If I sound like a little kid—blankets and scissors and glue and pencils—well, right now, I’m okay with that.
I seem to have been wiser anyhow, in particular about summer’s benediction, when I was a kid. With ease, the season beautified life. My hair was waist-length long and in the sunshine would bleach to nearly golden white, and while the rest of the year I looked kind of pale, and with my blue eyes not “Italian” at all, in the summer the true olive-skinned hue emerged in a rich, wondrous tan. I remember the very small, but adequate enough round pool in our backyard, which my cousin and I swam in for hours. We became mermaids, and the bottom of the sea is where we belonged during those evanescent days.
There was the ice cream man, of course, before I learned about seed oils and processed sugar, so that the ice cream we bought from that white, gangly calliope truck could still taste something like wholesome and delicious. There were the fireflies. I remember them so well. If you need any tangible evidence of summer’s enchantment, simply stand in a night field surrounded by fireflies. We filled mason jars with them. They lit up the jars like fairy galaxies. There were fresh tomatoes, so many flowers, and while our parents still put on their uniforms and left every day for work, they also sat up late together on the back porch eating fresh fruit, drinking wine and cans of cold beer, and laughing, and we were free from school, from the severity of routine, and were briefly permitted to abide in a world where roller skates were adequate footwear and crinkled water-blue fingertips a small price to pay for the weightlessness of a day spent under the sea.
I know I can’t return to those days. There are still bills to pay, obligations to tend to, a house to take care of, work to finish, children to raise, but this year I’m committed to getting pretty damn close, if not for me than for my son, who lives in a world that seems a little less magical than the one I grew up in, a little less deferential to his innocence and wonder, a world that seems to want to make him into things he’s too young to even know about, and if summer is a way to keep him here—singing Mister Rogers’ songs, swimming in the ocean, staying up later than he should, watching cartoons on a rainy Tuesday morning—then to summer we will defer.
So if you need me we’ll be on the road, or in the garden, or cuddled under a new quilt later than we usually would be, me attempting to loosen my grip on overplanning and overthinking, as well as my aversion to leaving home and its comforts, me attempting to lighten up, a little looser, a little freer than I am the rest of the year.
Are you with me?
Thanks for being here with me, truly.
xoxo,
Dolores
You perfectly capture the essence of summer in this story. A bitter pill that our children will grow up with a different type of summer than we had inspires me more to make it precious for them. We too have been living la vita lenta this summer. Thank you for the reminder to stay present. ~Michelle