Big Summer

Summer to me is a wide open space. I am a teacher and that means I have eleven weeks to play, wonder, and wander. I am grateful for this. I need this – especially this year. I need time to rejuvenate, regenerate, and grow in spirit. I am completely drained, but I know summer will help me heal.

Every summer, my husband and plan lots of trips. We used to go out West, then we explored all of New England, and then we traveled all along the Southern Coast. Then COVID came and our travels ceased. We are planning one small trip to Maine this summer, and I am looking forward to it. I cannot wait to get there. I travel there every night in my sleep. Maine is my happy place, my place of possibility.

When I was in grade school, summer meant weeks of reading on the beach. I would walk to our local library and stock up on novel after novel – historical, realistic, fantastical. I loved traveling to other worlds while I sat in my beach chair and listening to the crashing waves, smelling salty breeze, and letting my mind wander into blissful imagination and then peaceful sleep. That was summer to me, and it was endless. It seems to last forever.

Now for me, summer is short. It comes and goes. I vow to not waste it. I vow to savor it. I plan to enjoy it. I am ever grateful for the summer and its sunny disposition.

When thinking about the summer and the big possibilities it offers, I thought of a poem I wrote several years ago while my husband and I were on vacation in Colorado. We were driving to Aspen in the middle of the night, and there is it was – the golden moon – the biggest moon I had ever seen – an August moon – rich and ripe with possibility and promise.

Hide and Seek with the Moon

The road winds 
up the Rockies
and I awake 
to the twisting 
and turning curves.
We’ve been playing 
Hide and seek 
with the moon.
First she’s on the left of us,
then on the right.
She dances and 
skips across the sky.
Then is cradled
 in the clouds.
As we climb higher and higher,
We are amazed 
by her size.
She is a world aglow.
It seems that if 
we could drive
just a bit further,
We could reach her,