Redemption

At some point in my adult life I conceded that the best summers of my life were behind me.  I would never consider high school my glory days and I really try to embrace every new stage of life fully, but summer did seem to be reserved for the young, specifically because when you’re young you actually get to quit working for a few months.  As an adult, a week of vacation is weak competition when compared the summers of my youth, swimming at the Y every day chased with a big stack of Baby Sitter’s Club books, and and as I got older, crammed with vacation and camp sessions and mission trips and 50-cent Tuesdays at the movie theater.  In contrast, my adult summers allowed me to wear long sleeves if I felt like it because I was working in an office with no windows.  Then I was alternately first trimester pregnant and constantly nauseous or sweaty and covered in milk.  Don’t get me wrong, those summers had their moments, especially the utter joy of new life.  But that’s not a feeling exclusive to a season and the days of carrying a backpack with my bathing suit in it everywhere I went, just in case, were gone without a suitable replacement.  I embraced beach weekends and popsicles, but overall cut my losses, adopted fall as my new favorite season, and moved on. 

But now- summer, glorious summer!- is back.

So far, every day of the summer has been like meeting an old friend.  The summer feeling that I thought was lost forever is back.  We’re going to the pool every day. Afternoons are spent watching cartoons and eating popcorn. To take a shower, we have to push aside all the drying bathing suits, and bathing habits are in lax summer mode too. If you go to the pool on Thursday afternoon and plan on going back Friday morning, what’s the point of a bath in between?  That’s just more time to play and read books after dinner.  Some days I get up in the morning and get dressed in my bathing suit.  I’ve used a hair dryer maybe three times since May.  It’s not just the swimming, it’s the details, like eating strawberries with dinner.  I didn’t know I would ever feel this way again and I like it.