From Where I'm Standing... A Look Into Summer

There are geckoes and junebugs skitting all up the window screen in front of me and it feels like summer all too soon, coming with the speed of a freight train… the hot days and wild hours with chlorinated bodies splashing in and out barefooted all around to grab a bologna sandwich with a water balloon in the other hand and me chasing them out the backdoor, waving a pink bottle of SPF 50 like a lunatic.  And I try to take a breath and brace for it, for the comfortable chaos that I imagine summer to be, here.  This is the last season we will be new at, now.  It’s nearly been a year.

Today we had a taste of it, a breezy afternoon with football on the front lawn and water pistols that took a turn toward egg-throwing and whipped cream in boyish ears and sour-cream catapults that had us all in stitches, remembering, this is the good stuff.  Laughter and front lawn food fights and family movies into wee hours just because we can, because we love each other and most days, we even like each other, and I whisper thanks for that, for it is so good.  The kids are amped up for summer and its all I can do to try and get things together before the tornado of flip-flopped-feet stampedes in and out the storm door all summer long. 

I like chaos.  I do.  But this ADD-mama fears a bit of the necessary insanity that accompanies summer’s revolving door, and the mash of moods that crunch together in the melting Texas heat.  I worry about my ineptitude, that summer’s sun will magnify my weakness for order and organization, that my half-hearted routine will splinter and I’ll “lose” control (the illusion, of course, that I ever had any to begin with). 

For today, I watch these still-spring clouds spread wide and thin above my head and linger in the manageably warm air for another day – counting the days to come, mulling it over with a bold dash of anticipation as to just what summer will be like, here, and will I be able to handle it, now, with all these twelve bodies home all day, cranky and cantankerous, eventually pent up together in hiding from the blistering heat?

And as I wonder and calculate, I try to lay down my expectations and again practice gratitude for the days at all, for the season and all that is to come, whatever will come.  And I count, in the here and now, (and even a tad "late", with Ann, toward one thousand gifts.

370.    My mother-in-love’s safe arrival and wonderful company.

371.    Cool weather that makes for hours of chatty porch-sitting with neighbors and friends.

372.    Returning a favor, for a friend.

373.    A one-on-one lunch date with one of our cottage boys, full of honest talk and reassurance.

374.    Rain, even if only a little.

375.    A mini-vacation coming up later this week, trip to Austin/Fredericksburg.

376.    Side-splitting laughter.

377.    Deep words over cold ice cream.

378.    Mild-weather days.

379.    Sunlight, at dusk, and how it plays on my children’s faces, all aglow.

380.    Frozen waffles (and an extra few moments to sleep, this morning).

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