Summer Breeze

It’s been catch as catch can with time on the Catio this summer, for one reason or another. Today is a seize the moment kind of day and it has been divine. The temperature outside is in the 80s with low humidity and an awesome summer breeze.

Sitting out here alone, because the cats have both fallen asleep indoors, I offer little resistance to the power of imagination and memory. The soft, easy breeze rustles the leaves of the trees that hide me from the view of any passersby that are out walking alone or with their dogs.

It feels like my childhood summers, growing up in southwestern Ohio. That five plus year block of time when we lived in a small little house surrounded by neighbors on two sides of the property, and acres and acres of farm meadows on the other two.

The climate and vegetation surrounding me here are so like what I saw growing up, back in Ohio. The cell memories of my youth and of the past twenty years sometimes flow into one another.

The late 1950s and the early 1960s bore little differences from one another, at least in our lives. My mother’s memories and stories from her ten years earlier also sounded all the same to me. The mid-1960s national news of horror and nightly reported violence had yet to come screaming into our lives.

I grew from the ages of almost four to nine years old in that non changing environment. I thought life was like that. I thought I would age and mature and learn new things in an old world set to nurture me with unending continuity and wisdom. I thought children grew up safe and sound and protected. I thought life was set in a secure pattern and people learned as they grew and Mother Earth nurtured us and shared her secrets with us when we showed ourselves ready.

Sitting here now, embraced in that same Mother Earth’s loving energy, I sip Oolong tea and surrender myself to her beautiful summer breeze. She transports me back to those summers.

My rural Ohio summers were spent mostly playing outdoors with my dear friends Trudy and Mandy. They were double first cousins to each other and their families lived in a large two-story duplex that sat one house away from mine. With either mother watching us going on our way, we could safely walk alone back and forth through backyards and vegetable gardens. Trudy was one year older than me, Mandy was two. I felt closer to Mandy, I looked up to her and she petted on me like I was her little baby doll. Being someone’s baby suited me just fine.

We spent equal time at one another’s homes, but being at their house had a world travelers’ vibe to me. Their house sat on the road. My house was way up a lane and nestled quietly by backyards and the meadow. They had older siblings who knew things about the world. They had indoor bathrooms. They had upstairs bedrooms. One of the mothers worked outside the home. But all the best parts of their homes were outside.

There was a huge front porch that spanned the entire front of their house. There were porch swings on either side. Adults always had priority seating on the porch swings, that was a given. On summer days we had the porch and the swings to ourselves, at least until the older siblings came around. There was a half-wall that wrapped around the porch, with the flat top of it providing perches for us when we were displaced by our elders. Perching quietly and being forgotten was something I liked to do when I was a little girl. Maybe that was something I learned from my first best friend, Smokey. Smokey was from the previous neighborhood. He was my neighbor’s Dalmatian. I learned from him to sit quietly off to the side. There, one could be safe, welcomed, forgotten, and unbothered all at the same time.

The front porch faced the busy road. There was a large tree inside the fence at the property’s edge. From the fence we could easily climb up into the large boughs of the tree and swing our legs back and forth and watch the cars zoom by. It was another safe perch for us.

On the far side of the house, out of view from my house, and facing the same large meadow that bordered my home, was a splendid large shade tree. We would spread out their family’s handmade quilts on the grass and live out our imaginary lives. Besides the shade, the best thing the tree provided was a swing. It was a child’s wooden chair swing. I was always small enough to fit. When Mandy was in a mood to oblige, she would lift me up into it and push me to my heart’s content. The finest feelings I’ve ever felt have been soaring through the air under a tree’s canopy, overlooking farmland as far as I could see. There were three places on Earth where I could experience that; at home in my backyard, at Aunt Fannie’s side yard, and here at Mandy’s. The one at Mandy’s was unique, as it was a chair and it had Mandy.

Summers meant wearing thin cotton shorts and halter tops and flip-flop shoes. My mom called them thongs. They were cheap and flimsy and I loved them. I wanted to go barefooted and this was the closest I could get to that. At the end of the day, when I took them off, there was a white v-strap mark on my foot with the rest of my foot showing brown and black from the sun and the dirt. Summer.
My soul and my skin soaked up the sun.

Our days were spent sitting on the grass and plucking the long-stemmed white clover flowers. We tied them together and made chains to wear around our necks and on our heads as crowns. We tore off blades of grass and put them between our thumbs and made whistles. We would whistle too without the blades and try to carry a tune like Bing Crosby. We would argue about what the lyrics were to “Swinging on a Star”. We had yodeling contests and pretended we were contestants on The Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour.

We drank Kool-Aid by the pitchers’ full. We snacked on our mothers’ homemade cookies and frozen popsicles made out of the Kool-Aid. We took for granted what we saw in our visual backdrop; lush and abundant backyard vegetable gardens and the white-faced heifers staring back at us as they dreamingly chewed their cud. There were wire fences we could see through, the kind that had large square patterns that held our feet like stirrups as we climbed over them. Blue skies, white clouds, houses on big open lots and farms and farmland as far as we could see. It felt comfortable and familiar and predictable. It felt like forever.

We ate plums and apples right off the trees. One neighbor would invite us over to walk under his grape arbor and have our fill of the plump purple fruit. From our mothers’ gardens we would pick a tomato or a cucumber a piece, wash it at the water pump, and with salt shaker in hand we were feasting with each succulent bite.

There were butterflies to watch, lightning bugs to catch and put in Mason jars with air holes punched on top. (We would release them later.) There were house flies and fly swatters at every house. There were mosquitoes and mosquito bites to compare who had the most and the worst. There were house spiders and garden spiders and we screamed when we saw either. There were cats that lived in the barns and there were dogs that lived outside in their kennels.

Without sidewalks or paved driveways we grew up without roller skates or bicycles. We had red wagons. We had paddle balls, pick up sticks, jacks, board games, and card games. We played croquet, badminton, and softball.

For a few summers we had our Barbie dolls. We had the plastic cases to hold her clothes. We sat outside on the quilt and gave Barbie and Ken the kind of life the soap operas showed our mothers on TV.

I knew then how fortunate I was, mainly because my mom would often point it out to me.
Innately too, I just knew. I recall thinking to myself, I want to remember this and this and this. I wanted to take sights and scenes and feelings and swallow them up inside and internally imprint them into my mind’s eye, and brand them onto my heart. It’s a bit like always having a valid passport for divine time traveling. I still like to do that.

(The End.)

Hi there! Thank you for stopping by and reading my posts.

Here’s a link to my book: segue, FACING LOSS AND LIFE WITH LOVE.

Click on the link now and order your copy today.

Here’s to Beautiful Segues.