The Magic of Summer Rains

I believe in the magic of summer rains.

When the clouds come rolling in, chasing each other in a dance across the sky, I do not seek shelter. I walk out into the night, shivering both from the wind and the anticipation of the drops that will soon fall from the sky. I raise my head and open my mouth in invitation. 

The winds wrap around me, whispering silkily against my skin. A foreplay of what is to come. I dance a dance that is not new to my people, a dance inside my very DNA. My ancestors’ feet have pounded the same Earth in expectant urgency of the sustenance that is to come.

The first drops fall upon my face and neck and I feel my skin absorb the droplets as though quenching my inner thirst by osmosis.  As the rain quickens, I raise my hands to the sky and am rewarded with a blast of light from the heavens above. I spin, hands aloft, as the ground shakes beneath my feet beckoning my feet to quicken its dance.

I am drenched. My clothing stuck to me in sticky layers. There are puddles now beneath my bare feet, which splash and sing with every footfall.  The Earth is saturated and cannot take on anymore; the puddles are rising with every drop.

The drops fly from up above and shake up from down below. The entire world now teeming with condensation and I am unsure if it is all coming from the clouds above or if the Earth below is now joining in the dance and sending its precious moisture up into the sky.

I spin as the Earth shakes with release with each great boom of Thunder and the sky sings a song of relief as the winds whisper around me.

I remember what has oft been forgotten: I cannot separate myself from the spinning orb at my feet. We are one.

Motherhood and the End of Summer Sadness

I must admit that I love the lazy days of summer. On non-work days, the kids and I stumble out of bed when our bodies are ready to be roused and spend the day together, at home or off on an adventure somewhere. The pace of our lives becomes so relaxed and, spending nearly every waking minute together, we become even more familiar with each other and my heart sings with joy to get to learn a bit more about each of my children.

Then there are the final weeks of summer. I admit to a rising feeling of panic at the end of summer vacation. The first day of school means not only that our summer days together are over for this year, but also that each of my children are now a year older. Each year my children seem a little less my babies and a little more property of the world at large.

For years I didn’t talk about my end of summer feelings. My social media fills each year at this time with parents screaming out how ready they are for the summer to be over and their children to be in school again. I long wondered if I were alone in my feelings of sadness, if I were the only mother that clung to the last days of summer as if they were my life raft in a turbulent sea.

I know that there will be many blessings in the upcoming school year. I look forward to those moments of watching my children learn and grow. There will be many moments of joy.   

And, when school begins, I will bask in the knowledge of how lucky I am to have healthy, growing children that are a year older. I know as a pediatric nurse, that not all parents get to have that joy.

I will bask in the knowledge that my children are in a great school district and will thrive and learn under the tutelage of their teachers.

I will bask in the knowledge that I am lucky enough to work outside the home only a few days per week and have enjoyed many summer days with my children.

I will bask in the knowledge that my children will thrive under fall’s routine and find joy in the extracurricular activities that they will each choose.

There will be so many joys to come in the fall season. I know this.

But today and tomorrow and every day until that first day of school, I will allow myself a moment of mourning for these summer days of this year that will never come again. Never again will I hold my children in my arms at these ages. Never again will this summer come to pass. There are many wonderful days ahead, of that I am sure. My sadness of the passing of this summer does not mean that I believe the days ahead to be anything but wonderful. Yet, if given the choice, I just might choose to live in these days forever. A forever after of a mother with her young children immersed in the bliss of summer days.  If I tuck enough memories deep into my heart, maybe I can have just a bit of that forever after.

The Gift of Summer Boredom

I remember my childhood summers fondly. Days in which I would leave the house after a still sleepy, leisurely breakfast of cereal that I made myself and come home only for lunch in the middle of a day spent entirely outdoors. We did not live in town and, thus, playmates were limited to siblings and the cousins who lived down the road. Our backyard became the playground in which our imaginations would run wild- turning those few acres into magical forests, the tiny creek into a raging river and our trusty dog, Rex, played the many roles of horse, monster and any other creature that we children did not want to play. By the dreaded end of the three months of summer break we were tan from our hours in the sun, full of the memories of a thousand magical moments and bonded to our siblings in a way that winter’s forced hibernation never seemed to connect us. 

Today, I live on the same acreage that I did as a child. My children have the blessing of having the same grassy patches to scratch their bare feet as they run through it, the same creek to stomp through and catch tadpoles, and not the same dog, but their very own energetic pup to imagine away the days with.

However this is not the same world as twenty, thirty years ago. There are screens everywhere in the house to demand attention- televisions with hundreds of channels, computers with access to a thousand entertaining sites, tablets stocked with apps. There is also no longer the expectation of a stretch of an unscheduled three months. Their school friends tell competitive stories of elaborate vacations, spending time weekly traveling to all of the local attractions- various parks, the zoo, the science center, all the festivals, which come breezing through town. On the very first day of school they will be asked to list their favorite activities of the summer and no longer are the lists filled with things like finding old barn wood to make a bridge over a creek or a day spent in imaginative play with their siblings.

Our children have become used to being entertained every minute. In our house, we have limits on electronics and kick the kids outside on a nice day just as our parents did before us. Yet, the new cry of childhood seems to be “I’m bored”, which is certainly not a new childhood expression but now has seemed to have morphed to not really just mean “I’m bored”, but “Please find something to entertain me, as I no longer can entertain myself even for a short period of time”.

We have made a choice in this household to do what is no longer expected of children in many households. We refuse to spend our days scheduling our children’s every hour. There will be many days with no plans at all, when they will be sent outside with only the grass and the trees and their own imaginations to entertain them.

The screens will be turned off and our children will find that times of quiet can be just as entertaining, or even more so, than brightly colored graphics and cloying music leaping off of a screen. They will bond with their brother and sister, making memories that they will replay in their minds well into adulthood. Even though sunscreen will be religiously applied, they will leave summer with a glow on their skin, which will also sport the bruises that scrapes that come from climbing trees, stomping through creeks and chasing the dog the field.

This summer I will be giving my children the greatest gift of all- boredom. For inside boredom is the gift of getting to know your own mind, of finding solace and joy in nature and in the realization that the greatest gifts are experiences, not things. And, maybe- just maybe, on that first day of school list my children will write at the very top of the list one of the simple joys found in a summer’s day spend outdoors, no screen in site.