Hot Summer Days

Peach says:

Yesterday as Batman and I walked out the front door for a quick trip to town to get salt for the water softener, the warm summer breeze just mentally swept me away!

I said to Batman with a happy smile ‘A hot summer day.’ Usually that would mean mosquitoes, sweat and hair attacked with the frizzies from humidity. But, yesterday it meant everything but!

It meant warm breezes that soothe your soul, and keep the bugs away and a dry heat, not humid. It meant blue skies that don’t quit! Green oak, bay and pine trees! Tweety birds here and tweety birds there! Freshly cut grass! (Thank you, Batman!)

As I got in Batman’s truck, I was remembering past summers. Summer after summer. When we were younger, and the kids were small, and when we were kids ourselves. Summer was a time of low key, anything could happen, there might be an adventure around the corner, let’s climb this tree, let’s make a dribbled sand castle at the beach, homemade ice cream, hamburgers on the grill, lemonade, standing on the big wooden (cable?) spool like it’s a stage, singing Tanya Tucker’s ‘Delta Dawn’.

Praying your parents don’t make you come in for a bath just yet! Being told you look like a tornado ‘hit ya’ (that was code for girl, your are a dirty mess!) which I looked down at myself and assessed they were correct! I was quite pleased with myself!

Sometime ago I realized that to this day when I smell fresh cut grass, I cheer up immediately. Not only because it just smells good, but it immediately takes you back to those wonderful, ‘anything is possible’, summer days! More recently I realized part of that joy, was the fact that getting the grass cut was a success. Dad never had a new lawn mower, so it meant often a lawn mowing task entailed a bit of fighting with the mower to either get it started or keep it running. Once it was cut, we all immediately loved the way it looked and smelled and sort of celebrated another round of a long term battle with the mower, chalking up another win! It felt…prosperous! Not everybody won their battle back then, more so today because we all are more prosperous, whether we realize it or not!

Oh the thrill of school being completed for another year, and being ‘out’ for the summer, (thanks Alice Cooper), of knowing our kids would have water play, run around and have wars and play hide and seek combat style in the neighborhood, and be able to sleep in and have more time with us in the evening, sleep overs, forts, dirt bikes, endless good hearted mischief. It was a good feeling, even if we had to leave them and go to work!

Our two sons have been raised a long, long time and now each have their own families. I still, to this day am happy when school is out for the summer! Just the thought of the good times available to millions of kids everywhere, gives me a lighthearted feeling!

My sweet brother thinks this feeling might be because no school traffic on our respective ways to work. Hmmm…that might be it, too! 😆😆

It’s funny, I was telling Batman that while summer days take me back, fall and winter days I think I’m firmly in the wonder of the NOW! That is a story for another day!

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” — Genesis 1:11-12