What If I Said...: Summer Swift

Apparently I'm no good at posting blogs unless I'm in the back of a car, bumping down back country roads, or flying down interstates with trees and mountains and farmlands whipping by in a blur. That explains my miserable track record lately. Maybe I should hire someone to drive me around while I sit and write.

Summer has been moving swiftly and slowly here at The Box House. In fits and starts, some days drifting along at a snail's pace, others speeding by before I can even blink. And here we are, halfway through it.

I'm trying to live in each moment fully, whether it's a slow moment or a fast one. Trying to take note of the freckles on the kids' noses, the newly acquired tan lines and mosquito bites, the smiles and laughs and even the quarrels. Oh, how I love it all. How I want to tuck it into my heart and hold it there, to mold it into a mural of memories, lovely and tumultuous and sweet. Summer is so many things. So many styles and forms of art. Sharp, straight neons. Swirling, twirling pastels; rich and vibrant splashes of in your face color. Dancing and fireworks and water and salt, grass and sky and sand.

I'm watching my children grow into summer. I see their legs growing longer, their skin growing browner, their eyes shining. I'm watching them grow together. I think that's my favorite part: watching the memories they're making being made. Is this how my parents watched me? Did they look at me with vision stretching far into the future, trying to guess which memories would stick with me, trying to imagine the conversations that would take place between my siblings and myself, the ones that would make us laugh, make us groan, the ones that would spin out into a dozen different do you remembers? And as they watched, did they live a strange double reality, like I have been? Caught in between my own childhood and theirs, a no man's land full of laughter and lightning bugs.

Last year I wrote about the shift that caused me to finally love summer (here and here). I am grateful to find that I didn't shift back. The love is still there. The deep, abiding joy in these times of fullness, of heat and blazing sun, is still there. Sweating slightly, it's true, but even so, there.
Summer moves so swiftly, in spite of its laid back pace. If we aren't careful, we'll miss it. I missed it for so many years, counting my days quickly, skimming over them to get to fall. Let's slow our hearts and minds down this season. Let's blink less, holding our eyes wide open as long as possible, to take in every sight we can. Let's talk softer, laugh louder, jump higher, dive deeper, hug harder.

In spite of the swift, let's take it slow.

-M

{{ I rather liked the idea of doing a photo dump at the end of each of my blogs. Hopefully I'll get around to posting enough to make it a weekly occurrence, and not so much monthly as it is this particular instance. Some of these are from my iPhone, and some are from my Nikon, with pictures from the 4th, beach days, Busch Gardens, and just playing around.}}