Summer

Image credit: sanmarcoscommunitychurch.org

I wish I had taken photographs of those dozen children in the water, swimming in the pouring rain, playing "whack-a-mole" with globs of wet, muddy sand flung at each other. They are everywhere wet and everywhere muddy and everywhere full of the joy of it. Thunder and a ready meal draw them out for a brief interlude to eat dinner; but before too long, before they have finished eating really, the steady fall of rain calls them back to their play, its drumbeat on the tin roof rolling over their heads, drawing them away from the grown ups and back into the world of the pond. When, for twenty minutes, the rain stops, we built a fire in the pit alongside the beach and lug red picnic tables and beach chairs and benches around it, sharing four roasting sticks between us twenty. We build an assembly line of crackers and chocolate squares and stand at attention for lines of children coming with double spears of drippy, sometimes blackened, goo that we finagle onto grahams and squash into melted sandwiches. Then it's back to the beach and building a frog castle for the bucket full they caught--an elaborate maze of packed sand walls with levels and rooms and even a moat. They do this work as if the frogs' lives depend upon it. They drag some of us down to the water in small groups for guided tours.

At the close, it's pouring rain and one lone girl stands at the fire-still-strong roasting just. two. more. while two of her pals dig through abandoned wrappers looking for extra chocolate squares. The Beatles play out a car window and four or five kids gather at the sound of it for an impromptu dance party. "Love, love me do! You know I love you!"

Is there anything more summer than this? Not even a sherbet sunset on the ocean could best the colors of the evening. Families pile into cars, parents haphazardly throwing in wet towels and rummaged-through coolers, and sticky kids. We turn on headlights and wipers, turn down the Beatles, and fight yawns to the main road. It ends as spontaneously as it began, like the best summer gatherings do. We watch bats fly overhead and the girls switch on dome lights to read by. K falls asleep mid sentence. It's one of those evenings that feels as magical in the moment as it will four months from now when we are cold and waiting for spring. Too many gifts to count--at least a dozen or more--and another half dozen friends, all Midwestern transplants in one way or another, who somehow found their way to a spring fed pond in New England on a stormy night in late July.

Earlier in the week our friends offer us tickets to a baseball game. Minor league. The kids attend their first game, eat friend dough and ice cream under the lights and the home team wins. Another summer tradition. Too many late nights, though, and one is overtired. She whines at my heels like a lost pup, begging for dinner to be ready faster. I tire of the routine and ask her with irritation in my voice to please take her show elsewhere. We banter for a few minutes and I leave her still fussing at the table in the backyard. I've gone back into the over-warm kitchen to finish preparations. The quiet surprises me and just while I'm beginning to wonder what's happened to my oldest girl with the empty belly, she appears, with a fistful of green. She lays it on the counter like a peace offering--six plump green beans sticky-crisp she's picked from our garden. She does it without fanfare or sound. I gush appropriately, realizing in that moment that her need for food and rest are also creating a need to be near me. I suggest a cucumber and she rushes out and returns with one. "Do you want to cut it up for dinner?" knowing the answer will be "yes," wanting to give her an opportunity to stay close, knowing the way she loves to be needed. I hand her a knife, remind her how to hold it, how to keep her left hand out of harm's way. She slices it slow, arranges pale orbs into one compartment of a blue pottery dish, squeezes ranch dressing into its sister compartment. She moves on, salts and butters the beans coming out of the steam basket, pours milk into glasses (spills some and I jump on her and later regret it). I'm still learning her love languages yet she seems--at a very early age--well-tuned to mine. The gift of a handful of beans. She knew what it would mean. I hope I can find one to give her in return, one that equals all she held in her hand.

This has been the best kind of summer. Lots of traveling, plenty of time with family and friends and interludes of rest at home. We've had to make some decisions about K's health, another surgery scheduled for early fall that will hopefully be the final thing, the key to improving his hearing and his lingering winter colds. But we've taken a good and needed break, cutting back on therapy sessions and commitments and house projects. We won't talk about school yet--it's still three weeks away--and the month of August promises more summer traditions shared together and some new adventures as well. When we talk of fall, it's to make plans of what we'll still do even after our weeks begin to fill, the places we still want to show the kids. But of course, the season will arrive and life will get busy and weekend playtime will grow scarce as the leaves on the trees.

But for just now, summer. A rainy night; an impromptu gathering; a baseball game; three littles with bleaching hair and tanned legs racing, jumping, dancing, climbing; the pond, the lake, the mountains, the sea; a garden; chalk drawings on pavement and bike riding and bubbles and a lemonade stand. We've done it all, and we're not done yet.

Florida in June: Our last evening with Nana

Sibling love on the beach