Summer Moments

Thoughts & Reflections

We’re about halfway into Summer, and starting to forget what it feels like to be cold.

What is it about Summer? We look forward to it so intensely, even when nothing really changes. For many of us, the schedule doesn’t change dramatically like it did when we were in school, and three long empty months lay ahead.

Even if, as adults or even for some children, the schedule doesn’t change too much, there are a few things that often happen in Summer that are unique.

Sometimes we leave work early. Some days we don’t go to work or to school or to camp at all, and have a spontaneous run-away-from-home day. We might eat outside, enjoying an evening that lasts for hours, instead of the fleeting moments of day transitioning into a very long and cold night, for those of us living fairly far from the equator.

Laughs last longer, “just one more” is responded to with yes more often, the days relax and meld into one another as we march from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

The world comes alive. We’re thrilled running through a sprinkler or splashing in a pool. There’s cold ice cream and hot pie and the smell of the grill permeates the neighborhood every night of the week. There are noises and smells and colors we had forgotten about, crickets and cut grass and flowers in every color.

It is a time when we are all a bit childlike.

We are giddy soaking up the sun. Our senses are on fire, as the might only have been in childhood, with the newness of it all. We can become calloused, almost numb, with the every day, with the errands and the meetings and the bundling up the year requires, and in Summer, we are almost set free.

“But there’s something about that magical Summer, where we rediscover the wonder of the world around us.”

The days might be just the same. Dishes need to be washed. Conference calls are scheduled, meetings start early and run late. We always pick the slowest line at the grocery store.

But there’s something about that magical Summer, where we rediscover the wonder of the world around us.

We crouch down and watch the train of ants marching from our popsicle puddle down into the crack in the sidewalk. We harvest the first Summer tomatoes and nothing ever tasted so delicious. We sit quietly on the porch at the end of the day, smiling for no reason, for every reason, simply because we’re alive and spent time with people we love.

And we remember, this is what it was like to be a child.