While Words Have Temporarily Eluded Me, Here Is a Post from Early Summer that I Never Published For Some Unknown Reason

We are following the path to summer betwixt and between the raindrops. We are up with the birds ( i.e. the dogs are up wti the cirds and we have no choice but to follow) and we find ourselevs outside quite early. I resist it with all my grumpiness, but once out and about I feel myself expand into my favorite season as the warmth loosens the knots of winter and a damp spring, and the coil tightly wound inside of me as we ran around preparing for oh so many things.  I think I forgot how to just be.

 

My goal is to wander wherever summer leads me on its sunlit path. Work is work and dogs are dogs and house is  house and errands and chores are errands and chores and we have to eat something so there must be groceries bought or we shall go bankrupt wtih restaurant bills and too many trips to the gourmet market for expensive cheeses to eat in lieu of dinner. (When I was in said gourmet market after work today, a woman of my age announced to the counter help that her goal for the summer was not to cook a single night since all the children were out of the house. I need to get her phone number.)

Despite all of this, it is summer. A magical word to me, even after all these years. A time to read, to be outside, to sit around campfires, to be at the beach before the lifeguards, to sit in outdoor cafes, to head upstate to antique in Cold Spring, to find neighborhoods in the city to explore, and to eat as many meals outside as possible.

I do not think there is anything more luxurious than waking up on a summer morn and open a book before I get out of bed. There has to be at least a few days this summer when you roll out of bed and ignore the laundry to read a novel.  When we lived in Memphis, I used to get up very early with the kids, make lunches, drive them to school, and be back home before 7:30. I would make coffee, get the paper, and go lie down on my bed to drink my coffee and read the paper. I don't think my mother in law could have been more scandalized than if I  returned from the carpool with another man and got into the bed with him.

 

 

Summer is for the paths not taken the rest of the year. Mornings are for whatever pursuits make you feel the freshness of the season.  You can dive into a stack of books and walk around with a cup of cornflakes until you find a comfortable spot on the lawn to roll out a blanket and read Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. While you dip your feet into the kiddie pool or swing in the hammock, you can read her amazing journey on foot from Southern California to Oregon.  It is my Best Nonfiction Book of 2012.  

If you are like me, most mornings will see you driving to work and hoping for a little downtime in court so you can open the book you have in your totebag. If you are driving kids hither and yon, or waiting in dentist's office while they have their check ups, or if you are lucky enough to be able to leave the house very early with a beach chair and a coffee, as I did this Sunday, then I recommend you take along "  ".  The book is a coming of age novel about a very bright young girl who has a photographic memory, yet knows nothing about lifenothing about who lives in the Boston area in a family where the past is not discussed and questions are not askeddespite an affable and supportive father and a loving but depressed and withdrawn mother with her affable father and a mother who is frequently depressed and withdrawn

 

 

I like to read a chapter of something before I begin to write. Another author's elegant sentences and vivid imagery raise my Sometimes a problem arises when I decided to just read one chapter of a new novel, say for example,  Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead ,  recommended by my friend Diane because it is about a family who is about to have a wedding at their summer home on a pristine island in New England. One chapter turns to two then three and four and soon the sun is high in the sky and I've lost the morning.

 

 

That is what summers are all about: losing track of the mornings, or afternoons, or evenings, or whole days that seem to disappear into the evanescence of evening and the pursuit of watching fireflies. Find a bush to hide under and bring your needle and thread, your brush and paints, your pad and pencil, or a big stack of books, a plate of toast with sesame seeds, a jar of raspberry jam. Summer will not wait for you to find it but it right outside the door.