Aug 18, 2015 Daily Life, The Daily Post
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “In the Summertime.”
Summertime and the Livin’ is Easy
©By Vijaya Sundaram
In the summer, all bets are off. There are no strict rules, just hazily outlined guidelines for being, which we trace, or retrace, or erase, day by day. The days are long and sunny, sometimes boiling hot, (unless you’re at home with all the fans going), and cool in the evening, when our panting dog ceases her panting, and breathes evenly, gratefully, a flopsome, relaxed canine at peace with her world.
When we aren’t visiting her friends or going to museums or zoos, our daughter sits in her room, reading book after book, until it is time for me to read to her (our special treat), or until it’s time to take a long, rambling walk around our neighborhood, and come home for dinner, which she concludes with a delicious mango or lime popsicle.
On other days, we are at the local pond, surrounded by trees, and my daughter splashes in joy, while I sit sedately on the shore, reading, or gazing up at the sky through interlaced branches, entangled in a glowing, sunlit mesh of emerald-green. Sometimes, we’re off at her friend’s place, at the local swimming pool in the neighboring town. While the mothers chat about this and that, four young girls, all between ten and twelve, splash and play games in the pool, and I say to myself, “May this innocence and sweetness last forever, even when adolescence hits.”
My husband is busily building her a “tree-house,” although it’s more like a tree-platform (we have a smallish back-yard), with a (promised) soon-to-be-installed corrugated roof. This tree-house is glorious and abuts the Japanese maple in the back yard. Big enough to hold two girls comfortably, and four girls wedged together, it is a promise my husband made to our daughter a year or two ago, and now it’s taking shape. When he isn’t teaching music for a living, he loves working with wood, and wood responds to him — there’s a meditative interplay between him and the inanimate sun-captured pieces of lumber he engages with, and it’s beautiful to see that. To top it all, he’s a loving father and a devoted husband, and we love singing together in the evenings, all three of us in our little family, while our dog sprawls contentedly, secure in her place in our pack.
In the summertime, bees seem to drown themselves in ecstasy in the cool waters that fill our tomato, basil and eggplant planters, then rise, buzzing and whirring like helicopters, careering away from me, without harming me, when I come close to water our garage-top planters. These bees are friendly, and belong to our neighbor two houses down. (He’s an avid bee-keeper, and a brilliant gardener/landscaper by avocation, and we’re fortunate in knowing people like him. Bees need our help! When bees die out, so will we. So thank you, A!)
Our summer days are hot and hazy, and nights are cool and lazy, and my family and I feast on tomato salad and pasta with pesto made from our own basil growing joyously and luxuriantly everywhere in our front yard.
Madrigal singing en famille, reading books, writing, walking the dog … this is what I’ve been doing for the past week, although it was hectic before that — but who needs stories about hectic lives when the Summer sits outside our window, splashing heat waves around in happy abandon?
Does this mean that our lives are this lazy and happy all through the year? No, we have our ups and downs, like anybody else, but mostly, it’s happiness, because we choose it.
After all, happiness is a choice (unless we’re talking clinical depression).
It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy.
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