Onward to Summer!

With only two days left of school— two half days— this post is dedicated to summer.

At my house, we kick off summer with our own made up holiday: Breakfast-in-Bed Day. So, here’s to chocolate chip pancakes and hiding the syrup bottle behind your pillow for bedtime. Or, maybe scrambled eggs with toast and a tropical smoothie on the side, sun coming bright through the blinds.

Here’s to sunbaked days, grass that gets too crispy, and lying in your hammock with a sunburnt nose. I cheer for the little kids who run long through chilly sprinklers, until their teeth are all a-chatter, their pigtails drip, and their eyelashes sparkle with bright and dewy diamonds.

This post is a nod to long days of sand trapped in your bathing suit, and staying on at the beach for s’mores; coming home after dark with woodsmoke in your hair. It is an ode to pink toenail polish, scraped knees, and orange popsicle, sticky on your chin.

And, to fireflies— both the ones captured in mason jars and the ones vast across a field.

This is for families who will travel somewhere far, together, in minivans smelling of bubble gum, balled-up socks, and adventure. It is also for families who will stay home, cook hamburgers on the grill, and buy watermelons in the arctic-chilled grocery store.

It is for the high school students who will work “until close,” doing other people’s dinner dishes and vacuuming the floor. Then they’ll drive home along the back roads, windows down, a favorite song trailing on the cool night air.

This is for holding hands at the beach, hiking up peaks for the view, and scratching at a few too many mosquito bites. Go sip on watered-down lemonade at the church picnic and peruse the table laden with macaroni salads. Play corn hole.

This is about swapping stories with family you haven’t seen since last Fourth of July, and eating Barbecue Chicken dinners made by the fire department.
And, the ice cream truck with its endlessly familiar songs braying throughout the neighborhood.

Oh, that summer would find you, and fill you, with its generous heat and sticky fingers, plus buttered sweet corn three days in a row. Because you and me both, we need a long afternoon to stretch out on a beach towel, immobile in the sun. Or maybe to sit, quietly in the shade, watching grandkids fish off the dock and cannonball off a drooping raft. Later, watching the bats swoop down over the pond.

May you hear the cicadas roar.
Watch the heat lighting murmur a few towns over.
Pull a wagon of children to the park, a parade, or toward a drippy, double-scoop.

Please, won’t you look up one night to star showers— goose bumps stretching across bare arms.
Listen late to giggles erupting from the tent.
Drink your coffee at dawn, anticipating one more day of vacation.
Try water skiing.
Get sandal tans.

Breathe deep.
Swing on the tire swing.
And if it gets that hot, fry an egg on the sidewalk.

Do what you can, to do that summer thing where you play so hard it feels like rest, and rest so well you’re grateful for work.

Yes, with the school year nearly done, may summer pour over your weariness and fill you with glad restoration, a gift from the God who made us, made summer, made rest.

Watermelon photo by Richard Deng on Unsplash

Sprinkler photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

Tent photo by Chris Schog on Unsplash