I long to settle in a long settee outside or on a comfy, ugly couch with squeaky springs on the porch and read dumb book. Long sips of iced tea. Go swimming.
But it is more than a picture perfect postcard of summers past. As home magazines and stores play to our nostalgia with retro shapes and colors and cheap crap for playing in the water, there is more to this longing for summer than being busy.
I want to remember this summer to do the things I love. Ride a bike. Read a book. Build a fort. Have a fire. Go camping. Do these all with my kids... and Sues' kids... and Elsa's kids... and any kid who happens to drop by.
But beyond even these things... I want to remember to be. Smell things. See things. Touch. Feel. Listen.
Last weekend, walking with the kids in the evening around the circle neighborhood at mom and dad's, I was there, if just for a minute. I remembered how much I loved to walk at night in the 'burbs. How here, I admit fearing the darkness in our little valley with no street lights and houses too far between and too far from the road to shed light on an evening walk. How here, in the darkness, there lurks the cold, the rough road, the insects. But at home, the wheels of the stroller whirred softly in the night stillness, and we walked, talking quietly, staring up at the trees. Sage and I spoke the way Aidan and I used to when she was the strollered-baby and he walked quietly beside me, talking of dreams we had. I saw the heron, a snapping turtle, and the tail of a red fox as it darted into the woods before me. I smelled the deep cleansing ozone left behind by the quick but torrential rainstorms earlier in the day, mixing sweetly with the smell of wet, warm,asphalt. And my feet felt every soft step on the smooth, smooth road, warming me through from the feet up.
It is this... these quiet moments... these sweet moments... I want to have this summer.
Oh, that, and a cabin by the sea. Guess that one will have to wait.
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