No time makes me as aware of that distinction as summertime--the part of the year my siblings and I were let loose in the woods surrounding our home to roam barefoot and semi-feral until school came back in session.
It is hard to reconcile that former version of myself with the current. When did I become so domesticated? Was it simply a part of growing up, or did I abandon a piece of my country roots along the way? Is that such a bad thing?
Summer was (and is) my favorite season. I have a belief that we are conditioned to prefer the weather surrounding our birthdays because we spend all year looking forward to it as children. To April-born Michael, gray and foggy days are ideal; with my mid-June birth, the best weather is optimally over 100 degrees, golden and sunny.
My hometown was a suburb of a suburb of Dallas/Fort Worth, this moment on the map you pass through on the way to real cities. My siblings and I were part of the last generation to get to wander; I can't even imagine letting my little ones freely roam the neighborhood as I did at that age.
Royce, Jarrod, Amber, and I would ride bikes until Dad’s whistle would call us home for meals. After it rained, the creeks behind our house overflowed so we would go out with the Summers girls to catch crawdads. Wild green onion grew all over which we would harvest to present as bouquets to our mother, dirt still clinging to the small white bulbs.
When the sun went down, Amber and I would hunt for bullfrogs, gathering them in ten-gallon buckets to release en masse on our front porch, watching them hop away and disappear into the night. Fireflies we held in our hands, their little lights flickering a message to the swarm of their compatriots flittering around our head.
My grandparents--my dad’s mother and father--had a swimming pool with a deck around it and lived just a few minutes away. We spent a lot of time swimming over there, never-ending games of Marco Polo and making whirlpools that would carry you around on the current. I'd lay out on my Little Mermaid towel and let the sun warm me until I was too hot, then jump back in. Pawpaw grilled hot dogs, saying that he made them special just for me, and I'd smile and say they were my favorite, even though I didn't like hot dogs. Sometimes Grandma Pat would make a pallet for us in her room so we could rest, watching California Raisins or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoons.
Barbeques are pretty traditional for every southern kid I would imagine. Dad and his buddies would get together and get out the smokers to fill them with meat that slow cooked for hours. Standing around drinking cold sodas and beer fished out of galvanized tubs full of ice, they'd keep an eye on the meat; inside, the ladies made all manner of mayonnaise-based salads and beans while sipping on margaritas and telling the kids to get outside and play.
A lot of summers, before Dad got sick, we’d get up one morning while it was still dark outside and load up in the car to drive to Great Grandma Hill’s house. She lived in Littleton, Colorado, in the part that is Centennial now, so it would take twelve or so hours of straight driving. Dad has a weakness for hole-in-the-wall restaurants in dinky towns, places that made better stories than food. We’d break up the drive by staying in cheap motels occasionally, but Dad prefers to drive straight on through with as few breaks as possible, except for those little restaurants.
I can still remember Grandma’s house. Not everything, just bits and pieces. She loved butterflies, and collected dolls, including Little Miss No Name. We drank out of jam jars with cartoon characters on the side while she taught us how to play cribbage. If we were lucky, she'd make what we called cabbage rolls--German runzas filled with hamburger and cabbage that we couldn't get enough of.
Between summer visits, Grandma was my pen pal. I'd send her drawings and accounts of school, and she would tell me about her childhood and how the other members of the family were doing. Letters cost around 32 cents to send at that time, so I’d scrounge around to find enough loose change to leave in the mailbox. They don't let you do that now; you have to have a stamp. Maybe they didn't let you back then either, but our mailman always took it and the letter. When a bird built its nest in our mailbox, mom and dad started using a p.o. box and it became harder for me to maintain a correspondence.
Grandma started me on my ceramic cow collection. I loved cows when I was growing up, so she gave me the cows that held creamer for coffee which poured out through their mouth, beautiful handpainted ones with scenes on the side. I named them all and kept them for years, until they unfortunately got smashed during a move.
In Colorado, mom and dad would take us hiking in the mountains. Dad would carry me over the streams that I was too frightened to walk through. We used birthday money to buy fool’s gold at mountain gift shops, plotting how we would use it to buy a mansion for mom so she'd never have to work again. Drawstring bags of gum that looked like coal turned our mouths a most becoming shade of black.
Ten was a special birthday because then you were old enough to go to camp. We went with our church youth group to Camp Deer Run (where the deer run) in Winnesboro, Texas. That was one of my favorite places in the world, a place I felt an unparalleled closeness to God.
Summertime was always heavy on church activities. Summer Youth Series brought kids from congregations all over the metroplex to sing and worship together. Volunteer projects, lock-ins, devotionals, and outings outside of regular service kept our hearts and our minds in the right place and out of trouble.
In High School, summer always ended in band camp. For a while, they are all day--get there early in the morning and practice hard until dinner. The band director kept it fun by bringing orange juice and kolaches in the morning. Taco Bueno would sell us tacos four for a dollar for lunch, or she'd bring pizza. At the end of the long, hot day of practice, we’d put a movie on in the band hall and wind down before starting it all again the next day.
I've had all of this on my mind because Emerald has said, loudly, daily, and to anyone who will listen, how very much she hates summer. She misses school, misses her friends. She isn't learning anything. And (as Benjamin so succinctly put it), “two months!? But that's too much time with mommy!”
How could anyone hate this magical time of year? The time of going fishing and camping, boating out on the lake and sleeping under the stars. Of visiting family you rarely get to see and go on adventures in places unknown. Getting pickle slushes from the public swimming pool, attending vacation bible school, lounging in the sun, and reading a new pile of books from the library every week. This season was a celebration of enjoying yourself, a break from the stresses of school.
It's made me question if I just don't plan enough for the kids to do over the summer. We are somewhat tied to the house in an effort to miss as few therapy sessions as possible, as well as finances and having three difficult children (Benjamin is less difficult and more of the “grab and go” variety).
But she still gets a fair amount of trotting around. She goes to vbs and swim lessons, visiting family. We enroll her in activities and take her on as many vacations as we feel we can safely manage. We have a lot going on.
Which makes me wonder: was I appreciative enough at the time of what a good life I led? Did I thank my mother, or did I complain that it was too hot and I was bored? Were we begging our parents to take us to Disney World, pouting that we “never got to go anywhere fun”?
Was my mother as discouraged as I get, feeling like no matter how much we do, it's never enough?
I may not be able to fly the kids to Hawaii as they suggested, but I can take them fishing. Teach them how to tell the difference between a frog and a toad, and how to catch a firefly without squishing him. Make cabbage rolls for them and tell stories about their Great Great Grandma Hill that had this laugh that made you feel happy to your toes. We can make whirlpools and let the current carry us away, and eat hot dogs laying in the sun.
And, with any luck, they will look back on their summers when they're grown as fondly as I do mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment