Summer

I love summer! I have always loved summer. I like the heat, I love the sunshine and I like that I don't have to work during the summer - or at least if I work it is because I choose to, cause I don't get paid for that time.

I remember as a child growing up, mostly in Georgia, that summer was the time when you ran around barefoot all the time. It didn't matter that those asphalt roads got hot or that there were pine cones on the ground. At the beginning of the summer your feet wouldn't like those hot roads or pine cones, but by the end you didn't even notice them anymore. It was time to play outside, make forts, ride bikes, learn silly songs like "Mares eat oats and does (as in female deer) eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid will eat ivy too, wouldn't you?" (It took me a long time to figure out that the kid referred to was a young goat not a human child. I knew I wouldn't eat ivy.) One summer was the summer of bike riding, we rode our bikes everywhere. Another summer we spent long hours roller skating. What ever we did it was great fun and low stress. It was the best! Do kids get this kind of summer any more?



With my own children it seemed like we spent a lot of the summer going from one lesson to another. I wonder if they had enough time to just play and be kids. Did we enjoy those "lazy days" enough? I hope we did. I hope they had time to read books and play with friends and sit in the sun. I hope I didn't make their summers too busy.

Now with all the children gone summers often mean traveling. Now, I want to go see my grandchildren or visit some place exciting, like my trip to Europe this year. But I still want days of sitting in the sun and reading books and taking long walks with my dog. I still want there to be days when I don't HAVE TO DO anything. I wonder if we are so busy these days that we forget to enjoy life. I want to sit on the front porch and watch the neighborhood kids play. I want to play the piano and the guitar and my ukulele. I want to eat popsicles and throw frisbees and play ball. I want summer to be just like I remember it being in my childhood.