Inching Along

Summer has always reminded me of a long, slow stretch. And I mean that in the best way. After a run, I come home and stretch and it is the perfect way to honor my body and thank it for getting me through how ever many miles or hills I’ve just put it through. Summer’s sort of like that. The perfect ending to a hectic year where you can slow down, catch your breath, and just let days unfold. Honoring the spirit of spontaneity that summer affords (Ice cream anyone? A run through the sprinkler, perhaps? How about Loopy Lemonade on a Wednesday?).

I realize I’m describing life on a traditional academic calendar which always ends with a long summer break and you’ll have to forgive me. Thirty-four years on an academic calendar – grade school, high school, college, grad school, more grad school, teaching at Vanderbilt . . . I’ve clocked a lot of hours in academic institutions. I think I’ve earned a lot of summer (if for nothing else than the lack of a big salary all my degrees in education bring me!). And, I think my kids like having me around.

We do camps because we want to and luckily not because I have to find somewhere for them to go each week while I put in my forty hours. We’re doing swim lessons. We go to Grammy’s pool. The library. The zoo. The Humane Society. Target (don’t tell my husband!). Baskin Robbins. We have fun. Most of the time. Although there are days, and often hours in consecutive days, when I’ve threatened to give both of them away to Goodwill. Or we’ll be at the post office and someone will be admiring Miss Sage and I’ll offer her to them – for free! (Can’t you hear them later that day telling the story of this mean ole’ mom they saw at the post office who joked about giving her kid away – all I can say is they hadn’t been up with that same cute, fussy, cantankerous kid since 5 a.m. . . . )

I’ve tried to keep us relatively unscheduled. And, all in all, this works pretty well. I need my arsenal of errands and outings for when we are all tired of being home but our summer is unfolding and giving us time to run and jump, swim and relax.
We’ve been working in our flower beds (a penny a weed goes a long way with an almost 7 year old!) and watching our tomatoes come in. We’ve had picnics by the creek and dinner on the deck every night. We’ve ridden bikes through the neighborhood and even spotted a resident fox and some deer.

We get to go camping this week-end in the Smoky Mountains, celebrate Taggart’s birthday upon our return, and then head to Michigan to spend a month at the lake with family and friends. I can’t imagine a more perfect summer. I feel blessed in a million ways, so fortunate to call this life my own.

Other people aspire to have or do other things. A trip to Florida, a pool of their own, a membership to the country club. I get that. But me, I’m just happy that my kids are happy and healthy, my husband loves me and provides generously for our family, and that the kids and I get to inch along through our stretch of a summer. Footloose and fancy free.