One of my best blog friends, who I sadly have not (YET) met in real life has also been kinda stuck with writing lately, so when she posted not too long ago and lamented this fact, I gave her a writing assignment. I asked her: What is the smallest thing about summer that makes you happy?
And she wrote a lovely long post about the small things of summer that make her happy, that kept turning out to be pretty darn big things. That’s the thing about summer. It’s too big in all its beauty to be boiled down to any one small thing. It’s made up of so much, just like Megsie writes.
It’s sleeping in and staying in bed after you do wake up to watch out the window and stare at the sky. It’s turtles and frog song and and sun-kissed skin and butterflies. It’s berries and cherries and greenery and a chance to breathe deep in the warm fresh air and RELAX. It’s so much easier to relax when you’re warm. When you’re on vacation. When you don’t have to think about much but which direction to point your afternoon walk in.
Megsie summed it up wonderfully: …it’s the lack of the word “hurry”. All year long we rush around trying to keep everything in control. And, it isn’t like we don’t have places to be or things that have to be done in the summer, we just have more space to get everything done. It is such a gift. The gift of lingering. Without missing something. It makes me tremendously happy. Well, that and having my toes dressed up for the summer in their pink glory. And, that my cheeks are rosy again. And, that I can sleep with my window open. And…
It’s like that for me, too. Summer is pied wagtails, flitty little sparrows and fat magpies. It’s columbines and peonies and lupines and poppies. It’s the feathery, wavy, tall bendy grasses that line the fields and the roadways. It’s that specific color blue that belongs to nothing else but summer sky. It’s a drop of condensation on a tall glass of ice water, conveniently located in reach of my lounge chair. It’s the pattern on the inside of my eyelids when I close them in the sunshine. It’s my birthday gift of shooting stars every August. It’s bare toes, bare knees, bare shoulders and sprinklers making that chuck chuck chuck chuck sssssssssssssssh sound.
It’s both the leisure and the light.
Oh, and the popsicles.
Small, smaller, smallest. From huge towering trees crowned with leafy goodness to the fat bumblebees that buzz about the yard, every little thing about summer adds up to the great glory that renews us and gives us the strength to face the circle of the seasons until it comes again.