A summer edit

Here’s to the Good Life!

Some sun in moderation. Allowing double the time for my early morning walks because it is not necessary to get a household of people out the door. Sunscreen and salve from South Korea and mineral sunscreen from Target. Putting my feet in the pool because the swimsuit no longer fits.

A few streaks of grey.

A division between my adolescent children and small children, living life in two very different modes, which I learn to exist in two worlds at once: the world of ambition, emotion, and acne vs toilet training, scootering at the park, and read-aloud picture books.

I am reading aloud to the older ones as well. In “Galahad and the Grail,” author and poet Malcolm Guite transports us to the forests of ancient Britain. The story is written as a ballad, meaning the lines rhyme and it’s easy to understand and read aloud. As an avid reader, who shudders in the face of the “Odyssey,” “Iliad” and “Divine Comedy,” this is more my speed. At first, the 12-year-old let me know she was bored. Now she’s asking me to read one stave after another. My voice cannot hold out for two; we learned this last night.

I am still reading picture books: “Jambari Jumps,” “Down in the Sea with Mr. McGee,” and “Raft.” They are the sort of books that teach us that summer is a season and not merely an absence of the usual commitments. It is a time to sub out the early morning rush, the haphazard breakfasts and questions about homework, for a June of lazy mornings and late-night movies and July full of festivity and parades for the Fourth of July, County Fair and summer camps.

Is it really possible that August will come again with its unbearable heat, which I will challenge myself to embrace, back-to-school sales, and the school days coming fast?

As a newspaper editor and reporter, my days move week by week, ramping up as the weekend comes and I take stock of what stories are out there, pushing myself to attend those evening events when a book and my pajamas are calling my name. Or on other nights when we sit out in the evening air, the sun dropping down behind the tree line, and the breeze picks up, bringing a coolness to temper the heat of the day. The kids run around, dashing by on their scooters, clambering over the puddles left by the slip and slide. It’s hard to step away from moments like this.

I do not remember this invitation to linger as a child. I do not remember dog days of summer or anything like it, but I feel it now. Maybe we need to go through the challenges and tasks of adulthood before we can really appreciate the invitation to linger and soak in the feelings that surround us in these lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, in the moments when we find ourselves with just enough leisure to accept it.

The funny thing is that very little about the adult’s life changes in summer, but the traditions, the break in the school year and its activities, the isolated all-consuming events like camp and county fair, give it a flavor we add into our lives and allow it to take hold, just this once. It’s a wonderful feeling, and one I want to savor. I hope you will, too.

Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 7, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.

The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is a weekly, print-only local newspaper. To subscribe, call 209–358-5311.