Thoughts on Summer

Yesterday evening after we tucked the kids in bed I grabbed the car keys and my sandals and quickly slipped out the door to make a grocery run.  As I zoomed through the isles, snatching the various items we needed I made it over to the dairy section to add a gallon of milk to the cart.  I reached for the plastic bottle and had to pause for a moment to check the "good until" date stamped on the side to make sure it gave us more than a few days to finish it off.  What I saw kind of shocked me.  August 2nd.  August.  Wow. School starts in August - it's the month that feels like it will never arrive as you careen into June and the end of school.  Now suddenly it's just around the corner, just one gallon of milk away from being here already.

I swear, next year when I start blogging about woe is me, woe is me, summer is coming and I'm not going to make it!!! will you please tell me to shut up and remind me that summer flashes by in a second?  Let's not pretend that summer isn't challenging, because it is.  It's a lot of work and requires an inhuman amount of energy.  But it's also shorts and sun and water and late nights and crickets.  The crickets, by the way, have not yet started their evening chirping quite yet which means that we still have some time left but I expect to hear them any day now, and then I'll really know that our summer days are numbered.


Tonight was one of those perfect nights that you just long for come about February 12th. (Sorry if that's your birthday.  I just picked a random cold dark day.) My sister-in-law Whitley is in town with her kids and we had Cafe Rio salads in the glen behind my parent's house together.  Margaret was there with two of her girls and it was just a cool lovely lovely evening.  The kids had an absolute ball playing on the swings and running up then tumbling down the hill.  We sat in the evening breeze chatting away until way past bedtime because we couldn't bear to go inside.  I live for nights like that.

Yay, summer.

One more thing.  Last night before the grocery store run I attended a church meeting we hold annually in the back yard of a woman in the neighborhood.  She has the most beautiful yard and our garden party back there is probably my favorite church event of the year.  It's peaceful, people bring great food, and of course I love the company of my fellow Relief Society Sisters.  Two summers ago I attended with my friend Terri Lyn, who passed away only two short months later.  That evening she and I sat together on a lovely wooden swing that is nestled among about a dozen pots of blooming flowers.  We swung gently, quietly, mostly just listening to the conversations around us, kind of leaning on each other.  Maybe deep down we both knew that she didn't have many weeks left, especially not healthy weeks.  I think we even held hands for a bit, kind of clinging to each other, clinging to the fleeting summer.  Last night as I again visited this yard I could almost see us, Terri Lyn and me, still sitting on that swing together. I think part of our spirits will always be side by side there, holding hands and looking forward to the day we can hang out together again.  Hopefully there are many calm summer evenings in Heaven. I miss you desperately, TL.