No matter how our childhood memories serve us of late spring into summer, I think there are magical things about that golden time we all share.
The weather turned warm and after the spring rains, there were wonderful mud puddles in which to wade. Somehow, mud squishing through my toes was a good thing. Flowers were popping up adding new and vibrant color to the world for the first time since the last of summer several months back.
The world came alive with the music of hundreds of birds that had arrived on the scene to celebrate the season.
The nights were warmer relief than those I remembered for several previous months and after the bath Mom forced me to take, I went to bed and watched the moon bathe the earth in soft blue light. Sleep came easily after Mom knelt by my bed and said prayers with me.
Waking up with sun streaming in the window earlier than it had seemed to in April at the same time, was a sweet bonus. In school, the class had prepared May baskets for May Day out of construction paper for the purpose of filling with wild flowers and placing them on some random person’s door knob or porch. It was an act of kindness, that we were to ring a person’s doorbell or knock and then run, leaving our thoughtful treasure behind for them to find and be filled with warmth that someone they didn’t even know, cared enough about a stranger, to leave them the first of beautiful spring flowers.
That last day of school was coming up soon, but before that happened, there was to be a field trip, which, where I lived, was usually to a museum or a zoo.
As the weather slipped into June, I slipped into my play clothes, rushing outside after breakfast to let the warm sunshine drink me in. It seemed my whole, wonderful, near world was all mine to tackle and enjoy.
With no school, a long, warm and wonderful summer awaited along with neighbor kids and siblings with whom to play. Lazy summer days consisted of games of hide and seek, throwing a ball over the roof for a person on the other side of a one-story building and playing in a fort we fashioned under the branches of a fallen tree across a nearby field. When the first star we saw came out, we’d chant the age old, ‘Star light, star bright’ saying, and as the multiple stars shone against the black velvet sky, there were games of tag and hide and seek in the darkness until Mom insisted we come into the house. We didn’t have to worry about bad people snatching us. A night hard at play until Mom called us in after dark wasn’t unusual at all. We had to stay out until the flashing lightning bugs appeared and dotted the summer evenings. How do the bugs do that? It’s like magic.
Now, just as most kids do who live in an area where such fascinating bugs occur, we collected as many as possible to deposit into the lidded jar to see how much illumination they would collectively create. Rubbing them on our shirts only made the shirt glow for an instant, but also killed the bug and stained the shirt, so we only did that once. Mom hadn’t liked it much ether, especially when it was time to do the laundry.
Spring offered anticipation for so many reasons: watching the world come alive with new leaves, flowers and green grass and three wonderful months of going outside in warmth and not having to bundle up, and with nothing to do but enjoy every day playing and being a kid. But the most amazing part of it all is that we had the whole, long wonderful stretch of summer with no obligations but to play and be a kid. We didn’t think about how swiftly those summer months or kid years would glide by. We didn’t even know they would. We just felt like everyone was older than we were and we’d always be a kid, or at least that our grown up years were so far ahead, they weren’t worth thinking about.
There are special sounds to summer that never happen any other time, from the time the school bus wheels screech to their last stop to let kids out for the summer to the summer night sounds. Crickets chirp, frogs croak, locusts scream from the trees in seeming competition to the music the 100s of birds make from where they were perched aloft. And the whirring of lawn mowers is certainly a sound that isn’t heard in the winter.
Approaching anywhere near a public pool, sounds of delighted squeals and splashing water emerge as kids play and cannonball into the water. When you get back home from playing elsewhere, you might hear ice cubes and a wooden spoon hitting the sides of a glass pitcher as your mother stirs a new batch of fresh lemonade.
Somehow those days and nights have gotten lost to grown-ups, except in their memories. Life’s responsibilities ensue (and pursue) as childhood transforms into grown-up years. Perhaps we should each select a summer evening and go out at our convenience with lidded jars and collect lightning bugs again, but don’t rub the poor things on your shirt. It’s not good for their health (or your shirt.)
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