It’s like magic.
One day life is hot and heavy, full of obligations and bed times and coordinating the weekly schedules, who has to be where, when. It’s all deadlines and consequences and commitments and dread.
And bam, just like that, summer arrives. Instead of hot and heavy, it’s just hot.
I will never get over the feeling of summer.
The looseness. The exhale. The long, deep breath.
I always wonder why I can’t feel like that during the rest of the year. Who says we have to go to bed on time? Who says we can’t play a game of 5 Crowns on a Tuesday night in the middle of our regular life? But it’s no good…I have never been able to recreate it.
Summer is its own kind of magic.
We swim. The kids watch hours of The Office covered in quilts under the air conditioning, while I write and coach. We eat off the grill. We go workout. We drink large sodas full of ice and shots of vanilla. When the sun finally sinks low on the horizon, I take Auggie for a walk and we walk as far as we want. It doesn’t matter when David gets home and it doesn’t matter that it’s after eleven before we think of turning off the lights, and even then David and I stay up talking in the dark like it’s a sleepover.
I am my best self in the summer.
I am the me that never gets tired, never gets overwhelmed, never gets anxious. I am the me without the have to’s and the shoulds and the judgmental thoughts. I am the me that believes nothing can go wrong.
I keep thinking, “What if I decided to live my whole life like this?” Ignoring the clock. Ignoring the calendar. Being in every moment, because no where is more important or more pressing.
If I could choose, I would be always be summer April.
In the fall, I am belligerent.
In the winter, I am self-righteous.
In the spring, I am a martyr.
But in the summer, I am content. With the world and with myself.
I am hot and in the summer it seems that that is enough. I don’t have to be anything else. The expectations fall away and the minutes stretch and I take one long breath.
It is hot. And everything is perfect.