On Summer

Summer has begun. And I’m determined to make the most of it. What does that mean? Well, it’s a question I am currently trying to ask myself. Is it a list of places to go? Sites to see? A hearty ritual of yoga and sunshine? Maybe it’s throwing caution to the wind and being spontaneous and saying yes to all friends, whims, and fancies? I’m not sure…I’m still catching my breath from finishing another exhausting and satisfying year of teaching high school. I hear lots of “oh you’re so lucky” and “what I wouldn’t give for a whole summer off!” Yes, true, I give you that. It’s indeed a luxury, but I’ll tell you what, if we didn’t have a few weeks off we wouldn’t come back. Like, I don’t think I could physically drag my body out of bed bright and early another month and be on daily. But moms do it, dads do it, and workers a like do it. I get it. I suppose all of this is to say, I have some time on my grateful hands and I want to use it well. Deliberately.

I recently had a conversation that is oh so familiar to us all about motherhood and non-motherhood. It’s a score sheet that sometimes get tallied, producing comparisons—thus resulting in tender triggers. See, I’m not a mom, but I hang out with a lot of them. I love them, want to be one, and hold to my truth that I’d choose the chaotic peanut butter smeared days of tears and tiredness over my sometimes glorified days of browsing shops alone and taking naps when I want in July. But the truth is I like both messy kids and alone time, and I think there is great yearning for something else or more in both situations. When explaining this to my mom-friend, we decided to make the Venn diagram of momming and not momming have a nice big center circle. Somehow. Let’s try?

In other words, I want to enjoy my days while not calculating and comparing what they should be or would be if my plan A perfect timeline of a life panned out. Which, one could probably argue wouldn’t be so plan A perfect had it happened. Or so I tell myself.

I recently read an entry of Henry David Thoreau’s journal and was kind of enthralled. In the way you become mesmerized at the nothingness of watching rain on windows or a plant on your porch slowly grow.

It’s completely ordinary and remarkable.

I thought he could be a nice motivator to go on tons of walks, and then write about what I would have previously characterized as dang boring observations. That is pretty much his journal. His dang boring observations are not however boring, but rather bizarrely mesmerizing and insightful. As a naturalist he notices the hairs on leaves, the color of birds, and other items that sound like imagery to fall asleep to, but there is something not directly stated in his words which calls for reflection and alertness. Simple appreciation of the now opens a well of wonder.

If I’m honest, I have an ambivalent relationship with Thoreau. I, like most people (in my opinion), love the idea of him and Walden—a sort of environmental stick-it-to-the-man sort of guy who walks off into the woods and lives deliberately. But I haven’t fully immersed myself in *all* of his Walden reflections. He’s culturally relevant and people like to consume him in bite-sized pieces, but rarely often read his works cover-to-cover. The more I learn and read, I see him as a somewhat self-absorbed man who walked a little bit into the woods (it’s really not that far away from main houses of Concord) to get away from people. And maybe in the spirit of bothness, that’s okay. It reminds me of visiting Walden when spending a summer in Boston. We took a day-trip to Concord and spent a long time breathing in car exhaust waiting in line to enter Walden. Irony immediately noted. After finally parking, we battled crowds to walk around the reservoir. Oh Thoreau, we joked, look what you’ve done. It was still beautiful.

I think it was there that I unknowingly (at the time) recognized that the ideas of summer, or of Thoreau, or of being a mom, or of getting a dream job could be different than the reality. And somehow in both, the idea and the reality, when converged could be something spectacular. Both ordinary and remarkable. That’s what I wish for us. No matter if we’re basking or bemoaning, that we simply observe and fully live it deliberately. Oh, and lots of walks to help you notice. I think that’s key too. Here’s to our summers.