Summertime, My oh My
Ever since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a deep and loving connection to the summertime.
One of my earliest memories is driving up to see my newborn brother Sam in early May on a sweltering day. I was five years old & the mixture of my excitement of new brother & the late morning’s warmth felt like rocket fuel. I hold a powerful visual & tangible memory of the sunshine and heat that came through the car windows and the hot breeze flowing through the old station wagon. It was one of the first times that I was aware of feeling so alive.
Summer breaks were the most coveted time of the year when I was a kid. This was the 80’s and early 90’s, and there was no internet distraction, my parents were strict about tv time, plus, we didn’t have cable! What a blessing this was. Everything was outside- bikes, hikes, going to the pool and being on the swim team, basketball, and the couple of family trips we would do to beaches in Delaware, the Outer Banks, & Long Island. felt like the world was an open amusement park.
Every August, until my grandmother passed when I was 14, we would take a two week family trip to my dad‘s childhood summer home in Blue Point, Long Island. My siblings and cousins and I would spend entire days crabbing and fishing from the dock down the street from my grandma’s bungalow, & swimming at a local beach. The Sandy sea floor at Corey Beach held the ever present and very real threat of being nipped by crabs or worse, encountering a hideous but harmless horseshoe crab.
I’d actually go through a mini depression after my birthday in early August every year, knowing that summer was winding down. I’d force myself to try to make the most of the last few weeks of freedom. I’d try to direct my mind at choosing the excitement of seeing friends again when the start of the school year was incoming…but I just could not fake it. Not from myself at least. As the final grains of the summer sand slipped through the hourglass each year I felt a sadness at having no control over slowing down time. As an adult I now look back and recognize how much of a teacher each summer as a kid really was. A teacher of the true taste of impermanence.
Embracing the practice path of meditation involves softening the grip of resistance to the way things are. The fleeting nature of all things, an inevitable truth none of us can really do anything about. A bitter sweet joy, in making the most of the experiences we have, while seeing again and again that there’s nothing we can hold for very long. The act of sitting down and stopping. Stopping this non stop doing. It’s just so profound, but only when it’s actualized.
Summer is and always will be, to me, the season of joy.
I wish you all a healthy and happy and joy filled summer, where you enjoy it to the fullest…because just like that, it will have come and gone, my oh my.
