Summer is at midpoint and I notice myself and people around me alternating between a panic and plodding moes. We like a collective ant colony movealong the path of seasonal tasks and pleasure. Produce and blossoms come in waves and I pick and pack away. The waves and the summer sun beckon and I abandon the tasks and take to the waves to laugh and remember good times past with a tinge of sadness over those that are past.
I think life is particularly a mixed bag in the summer in the north because it is short and because so many new faces appear who come north to vacation. It makes the rest of us want to kick up our heels and forget the laundry piles and the striving after greenbacks and join the party. But at the same time we have lived through enough winters ( actually one is enough) to know better. So most of the time we restrain ourselves and plod through the should haves only occasionally packing up the kids and taking to the shore.
I noticed the last time I spent the afternoon at the beach that everybody had a child with them. Children it seems give us the needed excuse to enjoy ourselves! Hooray for kids for having the ability to influence us all in enjoyable pasttimes and pulling us out of our entrenchments!!
Speaking of kids being a good influence on us …one of the small things that persists from the days when my house was filled with kids is a habit of collecting caterpillars and raising them till one day we begin to release mature butterflies! Such a simple pleasure raises my sprits and reminds me of God’s might and imagination as I watch the changes and the beauty unfold on my window sill.
