summer Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Adulting: Second- Half

Keep On

I have often thought that one of my biggest blessings in my personal life is that I get a lot of joy out of the little things. Like for instance, I spent all day yesterday in delicious, giddy anticipation of another episode of Better Call Saul being released to Amazon. All day long, I reminded myself, “We get to watch Better Call Saul tonight!” (and even more exciting was the fact that 89-year old actress Carol Burnett was featured in this particular episode. I watched The Carol Burnett Show all the time, when I was a little kid. Carol still has “it”! And earlier yesterday, my friend texted Joni Mitchell performing her incredible song, “Both Sides Now” at a recent folk festival. Joni is 78 and suffered from a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015. The message I got from the Universe yesterday: Just keep doing what you love. Do what you love until you can’t do it. Love sustains you. Love creates you. Keep doing what you love in some form or another, until you can’t do it anymore. Be yourself until the very end. So, on that note, you and I will be here at the blog on a daily basis for a long, long time. I hope that you’ll stay with me!)

I typically reserve poetry for Sundays. However, I read a poem yesterday that profoundly touched me and I feel the need to share it today. We have an extended family member who has been riding a roller coaster of major health issues all month. This situation has been incredibly stressful and painful for her, and for all of us. I found myself doing my typical, yet not helpful habits of future-tripping, ruminating, second-guessing, etc. This poem helped me to find my center. If you need some summer centering, I hope that this poem touches you, too:

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Summer

How’s everyone’s summer going? An informal survey with my friends and relations says that it is going “really fast.” I feel the same way. But really, we all get the same 24 hours in any day. And summer is roughly equal to the same amount of time as any of the other three seasons. Perception is a funny thing.

I saw the quote listed below and it reminded me that almost all of us have had a summer crush/vacation connection (usually in our teenage years), or perhaps, we all can think of that just one particularly amazing summer in which everything was just right: our bodies looked and felt great, our trips and our weekend events were amazing and particularly memorable, we felt unusually relaxed and connected with all of our friends and our family, and the weather cooperated perfectly through it all. We just wished that the summer would never, ever end.

“I’ll never regret someone that I had an amazing time and experience with. Even if we fall off, you made my life special at a certain time. We grew together, even if we grew apart. Thank you.” – Poem Heaven (Twitter)

There is something about the slow, lazy, dreamy summer days that make you feel nostalgic for it, before it is even over.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, my dearest readers. I hope that this Sunday finds you well. I devote Sundays to poetry. I write a poem and I courageously put my poem out there into the ethersphere, for no other reason than I can. And so can you. The world never died from bad poetry, and many worlds have been inspired by good poetry. Poetry is a release for the writer, and a spark of thought for the reader. Be brave and bold. Write a poem today and put it out there for others to catch your spirit. Here is my poem for today:

August

I suppose that August was created in order to

Help me to empathize with my food.

August is like those last couple minutes of cooking

Frantically checking, cutting, smelling, sensing . . .

August is that crucial, tiny, middle slice of time

Which determines whether something is perfectly cooked,

Or entirely burnt and ruined, needing to rise from the ashes,

to start again anew . . . . .

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Treats

I love summer and all of the good stuff that comes with summer, such as ice cream trucks. I saw this chart on the internet the other day which showed the typical ice cream novelties commonly available from ice cream trucks. It made me instantly happy. Who doesn’t have fond childhood memories of “the ice cream man”? My regular go-to is the Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake bar (even at the age of 50, I am not beyond having my heart flutter as I rush to my purse, when I hear the familiar sound of the ice cream truck’s twinkling tune, and then pretend that I was just out getting my mail, as I try to appear all casual-like, among the throngs of neighborhood children – “oh well, perhaps a little ice cream could be refreshing, you know, for nostalgia’s sake.”) I honestly have tried each and every one of these scrumptious offerings on the chart, over the years, except for the “Screw Ball”. I had to look it up. I had no idea what a Screw Ball was, so it intrigued me greatly. It turns out that a Screw Ball is a sherbert type concoction in a cone, with a gum ball at the very bottom of the cone. (And this is the part of my story when I envision you all nodding, and rolling your eyes and saying, “Duh! How could you not know what a Screw Ball is???”) I am still not quite curious enough to switch from my Strawberry Shortcake selection, to a Screw Ball, but if it were the last offering left, I wouldn’t say no.

Speaking of gum, I bought four packets of Cinnamon Extra gum at my local Walgreens the other day. They were on clearance for fifteen cents each. When the kind and friendly young man behind the counter was ringing me out, I asked him if he liked gum. “Oh, I like gum,” he said. “Well, take one of these for yourself,” I said on a whim.

Friends, you would have thought I had handed the clerk, a gold bar or a Bitcoin token. His grateful and joyous and sincere reaction kind of bewildered me. He was so overwhelmingly thankful, that part of me was desperate to rummage through my purse for something more, like a hundred dollar bill in order to truly warrant his thankfulness (which I would not have found, because I don’t honestly carry around a lot of cash in my purse these days, and nor did I figure that he would want a used tube of lipstick). I started to sadly wonder if this young man hadn’t received many gifts in his life. Still, the experience, made me feel great. And it obviously seemed to make the clerk feel good, too. This fifteen cent, clearance gum is the most satisfying gum which I have ever purchased in my life, for myself or for anybody else, and I haven’t even taken the cellophane wrapper off of it yet. I suppose that there really is truth to the old adage, “It’s the thought that counts.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning, soul mates. I hope that you all are having a lovely, restful yet rejuvenating holiday weekend. Welcome to summer! My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. Poetry is much like the “summer” of language. It is slow and contemplative and full and sometimes heavy, meandering and inquisitive, full of background humming. On Sundays, I either write a poem or I share a poem, written by someone else, which has moved me. And also on Sundays, I implore you to write a poem, as well. Please feel safe and comfortable enough to share your poem in my Comments section. Today’s poem is a classic, popular poem by a poet named Marge Piercy. It speaks of the first days of summer.

MORE THAN ENOUGH by Marge Piercy

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

In Session

My daughter and I watched a movie called The Switch, the other night. It featured Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman. I love both of these actors so I wanted to like the movie more than I did, but it was still a fun, cute watch. Even with movies and books that I don’t particularly like, I usually have some glean of wisdom that sticks with me. There was one line from this movie, that I thought was particularly good.

Jennifer Aniston’s character, in The Switch, has decided that she is ready for a baby, despite the fact that she has not found a suitable partner in life, yet. She is seriously considering artificial insemination. Jennifer quotes a motivational speaker who says, “Life is in session.”

Life is in session.

Now, of course, Jason Bateman , who essentially plays “Jason Bateman” in every role that he has ever had, makes fun of this statement in his usual snarky, sarcastic way. But I personally thought that the statement is spot on. It sticks with me.

Whether we like it or not, Life is in session. It doesn’t stop for us. Today, seems like it is really the official, first day of summer for my family. The official summer schedule has begun. My youngest son, who is still at home, has started his first day of his summer job. My daughter will start her first day of summer volunteering. Her tennis schedule is now switched to summer hours. My husband’s work schedule always seems to change to more of a summer pace right around this time of year, every year. My summer schedule, as many moms can relate to, falls in line with the rest of my family’s agenda.

Life is in session. We are in summer session. Life feels slower, hotter, more relaxed, less scattered. But that is just an illusion. Life is still going on. Life is in session. Am I taking full advantage of this free, challenging, exciting, surprising, interesting course that I have been gifted? That could end at any point? Am I?

Life is in session.

The Way of Life

My youngest son gets his wisdom teeth removed today. Like many of these types of coming-of-age milestones, we have already been through this, with his two older brothers. We have a good idea of what to expect. My youngest son is 6’2″ and he works out – all of the time. He’s already high on the pre-surgery drugs. He is a dizzy boy. This is going to be a long day for him . . . . and for me. We’ll both be gorging on Talenti.

I’m longing to get back to normal. Of course, with summer here, the reset button has been pushed. We will be figuring out our new summer normal. We have to let ourselves get into the groove of new summer jobs, summer volunteering, my daughter’s summer tennis training, etc. I’m longing for “normal”, yet I’m not even sure what this normal is going to look like yet. This is the way of motherhood. I wonder if we moms would be totally lost and confused if the only schedule we ever had to think about was our own?

This is a really rambling, random post. Please forgive me, readers. Clearly, the summer reset hasn’t occurred yet. I’m still “all over the map” in my thoughts, in my schedule, in my emotions and in my biological clock rhythms. This is the way of motherhood, too. Or maybe, this is just the way of life . . . .

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
– Yoko Ono, Season of Glass

Summertime Blues

I have a little of that “end of summer” melancholy going on right now. My high schoolers are headed back to school on Monday and my college student son heads back to the university in about a week and a half. His girlfriend came over to the house to say good-bye to us last night as she is heading back to college early for her sorority rush season. We released our eldest son into his own adult world earlier this summer. I wonder when we are complete “empty nesters” if the seasons will seem as acutely distinct as they do right now.

It’s not that I’m entirely sad that summer is over. The heat has slowed everything to a molten glob of inertia. I’m eager for a faster pace. The summer jobs that the kids have had at the beach and eateries have lost their novelty and newness and the “wind down” is obvious. I remember how shockingly disrupted I felt the first summer after all four of my kids had started going to school for full days. I’m a person who likes my “alone time” and I am eager to feel the uninterrupted quiet of my thoughts and my own personal rhythms again.

Still, it’s the little things that make each summer special and a little unique to previous summers. This year when I drove my daughter to tennis every morning, we enjoyed a routine of listening to the same crazy radio show and laughing along with the antics of the DJs who we have both grown to really like. We saw on a country road, the same elderly man, dressed formally, always smiling, walking with his cane and this mop of a dog that my daughter and I have nicknamed “Smoothie.” “Smoothie” gives us the most hilarious “stare down” every morning, annoyed that we have disturbed the peace of she and her beloved. The few times that we haven’t seen them on their daily walk, we have been concerned. We missed them. I will miss them this fall.

Summer is the time of big, new adventures and the anticipation of big, new adventures. It is the time of slowing down and baking, prepping for the feast of the banquet of new learning and growing in the fall. It is a pause in the schedules of life. I have to hit “play” again here soon and I think I’m ready, but I’ll keep the bright memories stored on my life drive forever.