summer 2021, brought to us by vaccines

Andy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last week, our eighteenth lunch at Lindey's after a pandemic pass last summer. 

And then we left Tucker in charge of bedtime one evening to join friends for an intimate farewell dinner.  We hadn't dined inside, with civilized conversation and cloth napkins and fine wine, in ages. I had nearly forgotten the joy of being together without three young men, of seeing Andy through the lens of other people instead of my same old worn out eyes. I had nearly forgotten the way it feels to simply be dressed and put together and ready to leave the house. 

Some humming sense of continuity has returned, and I find myself leaving my phone on the table, sitting on the dock while the boys play in the lake, sweet little potato feet making wet prints on the concrete as they run back to the table for snacks. I don't have pictures of cousins squeezed together in one seat, lollipop sticks protruding from blue lips, of Hank hula-hooping with RoRo in the backyard or of Tolliver's glider trials from the treehouse. Life, for what felt like the longest time, was reduced to survival and domesticity, and now it's more full than I can document.

Finished with weeks of Safety Town and OWjL and a second sailing camp, some combination of the boys and I spend most days down the hill at the municipal pool. An instrument not an ornament, I remind myself sitting on the bottom, pinky extended for an underwater tea party. And again when, arms outstretched to make a ring, we all fall down. I am not the mom poised perfectly at the side of the pool. I am apparently not the mom taking photos of all the things either.

I texted Tucker yesterday, trying to gather everyone for dinner, but he'd been part of an organized egg toss two blocks over and his watch was too sticky to work. It's odd how, after looking at each other head on for an endless series of terrifying months, the children I fretted over are off on their own sunshiny adventures. I'm trying to remember how to balance it all, and to make time to share some of it here. 
And none of it matters really, except in the small, ordinary way that all things can matter.

I did find a picture of the neighborhood posse admiring an assassin bug

tending tender things

May we raise children 

who love the unloved 

things – the dandelion, worms 

and spiderlings. 

Children who sense 

the rose needs the thorn 

& run into rainswept days 

the same way they 

turn toward sun… 

And when they’re grown & someone 

has to speak for those who 

have no voice 

may they draw upon that 

wilder bond, those days of 

tending tender things 

and be the ones.

poem by Nicolette Sowder

tinkering

 

signs of summer

Hank has approximately eighty five temporary tattoos on his body this week, even after we used mineral oil to remove the ones on his eyelids. Most days he decorates the driveways and winds up covered in so much chalk dust he looks like he may be working for the drug cartel.

The arrival of ticks and tank tops, skipping shoes and skipping stones and skipping bedtime, my perspective alternates between tired and energized. It is the season of applying sunscreen and adjusting goggles and "watching this" over and over again under a sky of wavering blue.

Except maybe I'm not watching enough because phrases like "How did you get so dirty?" and "How have we managed to spill an entire new container of bubble solution?" aim to borrow space on my lips, but those words are not good tenants, and I try to replace them with things like "I love to watch you play."

There are wet towels on the floor, watermelon rinds piled on the counter, snack wrappers and library books and footballs strewn about the yard. Everything that does not feel sticky from bubble solution feels sticky instead from popsicle drips. Except the popsicle box is always empty. 

sometimes

Mostly the boys are loud, only scuffles and shouts, everything that frazzles a mother.

Sometimes one of them stops to read.

unbored

We've been to the pool and the berry patch, to graduation parties and, finally, inside the library. 

There are flowers to gather and jungle projects to amend, piano to practice and clay pots to mold and cats to snuggle and invention camp to attend...

Ahoy!

The big boys took a sailing course last week. By Friday, we watched them sail competently from the yacht club back to port to de-rig the boats. They participated in capsize drills and tried tacking and jibing, learned to tie nautical knots and had so much fun with cousins on the lake.