And the Livin' Was Easy

We had the craziest weekend. Crazy as in boring but not uneventful. We didn't plan it that way but hubs back went out Saturday morning so we spent the weekend lifting him off the floor and helping him in and out of a chair. He finally phoned the doctor on Sunday morning (hey, that's why they make the big bucks, right?) and the doctor prescribed Advil and some theraputic swearing. I do like a doctor who maintains his sense of humor when he's phoned early on a Sunday morning. Hubs could handle the swearing on his own so I ran back and forth to the pharmacy for more Advil and heating pads in the hopes of making his 14+ hour flight to India Sunday night a little less miserable. Is it possible to make a 14+ hour flight less miserable? I did my best.

Let's talk about something happy shall we...summertime.

Does it feel like summer where you live because it doesn't quite feel like summer here.

What's summer supposed to feel like when you hit midlife anyway?

As a kid the seasons were so clearly defined...fall meant new shoes, school supplies in recycled cigar boxes, and a game of kickball on the playground at recess. Christmas lights, a fire in the fireplace, and the glorious possibility of waking to a snow day carried us through the short days and long nights of winter until one day we'd pull back the curtains and see my mother's Iris bed decked out in shades of purple. We knew then spring had sprung and it was time to swap our warm coats for windbreakers. We felt the sizzle of summer just beneath the asphalt and we counted the days til she broke free.

Summer meant bare feet. The ice cream truck. No hands on my bicycle as I flew to the neighborhood pool. It was playing Marco Polo and bravely jumping off the high dive. It was grumbling at the sound of a lifeguard's whistle, the universal signal for adult swim.

Summer meant the juice of a watermelon running down my shirt, Kool-Aid sold beside the curb, and corn, dripping in butter, eaten right off the cob. It was sleep away camp, church picnics, and the neighborhood block party. Summer meant taking turns sitting on the ice cream churn as it was cranked by hand in the semi-cool of the garage. It was the sound of a lawnmower and the smell of a charcoal grill.

Summer meant running through sprinklers and spreading your towel on the hot pavement to get warm. It meant catching things...butterflies in a net, fireflies in a mayonnaise jar, neighborhood kids with the words, "you're it!".

The sky felt bigger somehow and there were more stars too. Maybe there were just more minutes in the hours so you noticed. Your mother called you to come in and you groaned, but just a little. You were something that only children can ever be...blissfully tired.

Your mom would say you needed a bath but she would settle for you sitting on the side of the tub as she washed the remnants of a day well spent from your dirty feet.

Sleep came more easily at the end of a summer day. It is one of the things you remember most....the sticky sweat on your neck and the dream in your heart as a chorus of ten thousand cicadas or maybe only one sang out into the night.

What is summer supposed to feel like in midlife?

I think the answer to that question can be found walking barefoot in the grass on a warm June day, counting the stars in a clear night sky, and listening for the song of the cicada through an open bedroom window.

"Then followed that beautiful season...summer...filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow