Friday, July 07, 2006

Listening to Summer

When was the last time we had such a glorious early summer – a perfect mix of sun and fresh breezes?  After all, by this point in July, Indiana has usually thrown its heavy, sweating arm around my shoulders like a drunken lout at a party – and all that’s on my mind is: escape!

But this year, the summer’s singing a different tune. We’re still sleeping with the windows open, and so I awaken not to muffled air-conditioning and the bleep of an alarm, but to bird warbles and flower-edged breezes.  This year, June was soft enough for me to prolong my spring gardening, so I dawdled, experimentally planting heirloom striped cherry tomatoes, and accepting my friends’ gifts of divided perennials, putting in hot pink daisies, purple and white phlox, and a new stand of double-bearing raspberries.  I chose kooky places to tuck in seeds for giant stubble-faced sunflowers, just to see what will happen, and am nursing along a vine of moonflowers that promise to unfurl at sundown like perfumed dessert plates. Why not?  This summer feels like a time to stick close to home, to pay attention to the rhythm of the present.  A friend of mine went on a trip to Paris in May, and I understood her sheepish regret when she confessed, “Well, Paris was wonderful, of course, but I missed seeing every one of my poppies bloom!” This year, I don’t want to miss a thing.

Last summer, we piled the car full of camping equipment and geotracking devices, and drove thousands of miles in a fun but exhausting 3-week loop to the Grand Canyon.  If you quiz our kids about the best parts of that trip, they will not name the park ranger lectures on sedimentary rocks or the long dusty hikes.  What they loved were the campfires.  Sure, they have the usual kid’s primal desire to Burn Stuff, whether it’s a Little Debbie box or a plain old stick.  But it’s more than that – like me, they loved the slow time around the campfire, the way conversation shifts like smoke, the way you can sit comfortably in silence, group-meditating to the flames’ crackles and the soft thrum of the night. That, I realized, was the real vacation, and we can do that right at home.  But you have to create the space for it.

Human geographers and city planners know how this works – it’s the Field of Dreams principle:  if you build a place for people to gather, gather we will.  Case in point: We transformed our front yard a few years ago by installing a basic kid swing from the limb of our red maple tree– a few feet of rope, a wooden bench - nothing fancy.  But suddenly, the front yard became a space for kids to hang out and learn about turn-taking, to invent games and to practice dare-devil leaps. Children walking by would now shyly ask to play, and we’d stand around, getting to know the parents who otherwise would have walked past with only a Midwestern smile and nod.

This year, we applied the Field of Dreams principle to the back yard. We put our vacation money toward a shaded bench swing, a hammock, and a fire bowl, and voila - our yard has become a place for friends to gather, and a space that calls us to stay outdoors, to soak in the summer, to slow down and listen to the breeze and to one another.  I find that once I’ve wrestled myself into the hammock with a novel, I’m likely to stay there for awhile, maybe even drop the book on my belly and just gaze up at the kaleidoscope of leaves and sky. There will always be work.  Summer says, “Catch me before I’m gone!”

I watch my daughters and their friends, no longer needing to be pushed outside, but instead whiling away hours talking idly from opposite ends of the bench swing or the hammock, their toes touching in an invented canoe, their stories and dreams held aloft by currents of breeze. Even grown-ups, cramped by work, tend to unfurl around the diverting flames of our back-yard fireside.  Who can gripe about committee work or compare computer upgrades while toasting marshmallows and basking in the evening air that has felt this year like a cool seaside memory?  Inspired by the fireflies winking around us like thrown sparks, our conversations wander from favorite books to silly family stories, to dreams for the future.  The harmony line running through it all is simple and true: Isn’t it good to be together?  Aren’t we at our best when we’re with those we cherish?

Death has come too close to our house this year to mistake this lesson; this gentle summer teaches us every balmy day, every cool and fragrant night. Life is ... just this.  Breathe it in. Slow down and swing. Create a space to bloom with one another, right here, right where we live, right now.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on July 07, 2006
Family & Friends • Home & Garden • Nature & Outdoors • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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