Summer time is here, yay!
This is the time of year I have always looked forward to. As a kid it meant break time from school, three long months of warmth, sun and freedom. An easy wardrobe of short sleeves and shorts, sockless tennis shoes and sandals, and if we were really lucky a swimsuit, and an inner tube! Cars had tires with inner tubes back then so they were the easy to come by swim equipment of a child's best day in the water. There were not many people with pools since the season to enjoy them in the Midwest was so short, and the nearest beach was on a small lake thirty minutes away. The sandunes of lake Michigan were the best, but they were even farther away still, the water was icy and sunburns were guaranteed. As teenagers trying to get a "tan" we actually used baby oil to attract the sun. We could lay out at home all day and not get even a smidge of color, but go to the beach and yikes! We didn't like the pain of the sunburn but we thought our lilly white skin looked real good "kissed" by the sun, at least until a couple days later when we blistered and peeled!
Winter's in the north are brutal and seemingly endless when you're a school kid. We did make the best of it with ice skates, sleds, snowball fights and snow forts in the drifts. One year after a blizzard that left everyone stranded for days we entertained ourselves with jumping off the roof into the giant snowdrifts. Dad gave us rides in the saucer sled tied by a long rope to the bumper of the car, you can't get away with that anymore! All those bulky clothes, and frozen fingers and toes made outdoor socializing short and seldom. There just wasn't any time that compared to summer!
From the time we woke up until the time we heard the whistle blow, (that was my parents way of summoning us in for supper), we were free! There was baseball to be played, hoops to shoot, trees to climb and even one with a tree house my friends dad built to hang out in. There were wild strawberries to pick, green beans to snap, and corn to shuck. Long bike rides to friends houses, though most of our time was spent outside not in. We rode our bikes to the woods with a creek running through which inspired our youthful imaginings. We were like the Swiss family Robinson's and Huck Finn's. There was a stable just a half mile or so away, many bike rides ended at the stables, I absolutely loved the horses and always wished I could have one of my own. Our bikes were our ticket to an ever expanding world. We rode miles from home to other neighborhoods, to school playgrounds, to the old cemetery that always fascinated me. I liked reading the names, many were familiar because I had classmates with the same name. I wondered if those classmates knew the deceased, or if they had gone on long before they could. Some of them dated back a couple hundred years which is about the same as eternity to a person of grammar school age. I remember a particular bike ride down a street lined with oak trees the summer that the 17 year locusts came. It was so noisy with their clacky buzzing, I was a little afraid, OK a lot afraid. One came to rest on my shoulder unbeknownst to me, funny how a bug as big as they can be on you and you not know it, funny 'till you know it anyway, then it's not so funny! when I turned my head that direction and spotted it's red eyes and HUGE winged body I cried for my friend to get it off of me. She was braver than I and rescued me, but from that point on there were no bike rides on tree lined streets until the locusts had moved on!
As kids our ears were finely tuned to pick up the music of the ice cream man coming from far off, we'd run inside to beg our parents for money, rarely succeeding in getting some, which only made it more of a treat when we did! We never had money of our own, good thing, we'd have blown it all on candy and such, but we were undeterred figuring out how we might leach a few meager coins on our own. We would start out walking in the direction of the little neighborhood corner store and by the time we reached it find enough discarded pop bottles that paid a return deposit of 10 cents each to purchase our goodies! If we found only 1 pop bottle we could buy 5 pieces of bazooka bubble gum, which was like a twofer because of the comic!
We thought those summer days would go on and on and on, we would have plenty of time for all the plans we made, all the games scheduled, all the discoveries yet undiscovered. We dreamed as we leaned against a tree, or layed in the grass looking up at the images the clouds created for us. We had our homemade kites, fishing poles and butterfly nets to test. We had adjustable roller skates, pogo sticks and stilts to master. Surely we would improve our no handed bike riding skills, even turning corners with no hands. We wore our summer scrapes, abrasions, sunburns and mosquito bites with hardly even a notice, it all just went with the territory.
The summers peeled away along with childhood, and it all turned much quicker than I ever thought it would, into my children's childhoods. They had their own summer experiences, from snake hunts to saving baby ducks, from their own capers in the woods and on the canal, to baby lizard "earrings", (a southern experience!) They were not restricted by the frosty northern climate, so outdoor activity with neighborhood friends was always available, still, if you ask them, I suspect they too will tell you there's no time like summer.
Today I mowed the grass. When I stepped outside the heat surrounded me, the brightness of the sun caused my eyes to squint for relief until they could adjust. I heard the wind chimes from my back yard and my neighbor's, the squeak of the ventilation turbine on the roof, birds whistling and a baby bird cheeping for attention from it's mama. It smelled green, clean and alive as each pass of the mower divided the short grass from the long until finally it was all evenly manicured.
I love summer now as much as I ever did, but for different reasons. There's no school schedule I'm forced to work around, no early mornings of rushing to get fed, dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed and out the door to the classroom before the bell rings. Summer no longer needs to relieve me from all that. Now I love it just because it's like a dear sweet friend that I've welcomed every year at this time to share the real me with. The me whose fondest desires dare to become plans that are finally loosed from scheduling restrictions to have a chance at fruition. The me that doesn't have to quit in the middle of a project because I have to get up early in the morning, even though with work sometimes I still do. The me that remembers the me I used to be, and the little kids my kids used to be every summer, carefree, laughing, enjoying life. The slowed down version of me, the unwound version, the de-stressed version, the slightly browner version, the well rested, refreshed, rejuvenated, re-inspired version.
Technically, according to the calendar there are still a few more days 'till the official start of summer, but I don't mind getting a jump start on it. In fact I'm a bit in the mood to erect a clothes line, wash my sheets, and hang them out to dry in a warm breeze. Maybe I'll put a burger on the grill my son just brought over for me, pour a glass of iced tea and sit out on my turquoise plastic Adirondack chair next to the kitchy pink flamingos I wanted, and got, for my birthday a couple years ago. Boy if that doesn't scream vintage summer in Florida!
I named my pink flamingo's Floyd (Pink Floyd) and Trixie. They have a story too, I'll get into all that one of these days. For now, I think I'll just pour myself that glass of iced tea and go out and join Floyd and Trixie for a bit of R and R under the palm trees.
Mmmm mmm mmm, I do love summer!
