Savoring Summer

June 1 has come and gone. Thus marks the beginning of summer.

I am aware that the ‘official’ start to summer won’t happen for 20 more days but for me summer is now fully up and running. It happens to be my favorite season.

Its favorite status might be a throwback to the years when I was home schooling my children and summer marked a carefree time when the only requirements for the day were getting up in the morning and playing late into the night.

But being my favorite season could go all the way back to my childhood. I loved summer because it meant no school. Even in college, although I worked in the summer, there was a definite marking of time when school was out and summer was in.

Regardless, summer, as with every season, is nature's way of reminding us that time marches on.

In my early adult years I relocated from Michigan to Southern California and that was the first time I noticed that seasonal changes held within them significant reminders to stop and savor life. I was young and not as apt to reflect on how quickly time slips by but the lack of significant difference between an LA summer and an LA winter bothered me. It was then that I realized that the change of seasons is a regular reminder that time never stops. We grow older. Life changes and we can never slow it down. Without intentionally regarding each day as special, one melds right into the other and years pass before we even realize it.

In the years when my children were little the passage of time seemed at warp speed. Granted, the seasons changed; their birthdays and special accomplishments marked the years. I observed them with care but with so much happening there was little time to fully reflect on how fast it was all passing. At least summer afforded us a bit more down time to just relax and enjoy one another.

Throughout the years when I was working I rarely got to fully enjoy the seemingly purposeless days of summer. One season blended into the next without much fanfare.
Last summer I quit my job in early July. I vowed to fully embrace and savor each summer day. But, by the time my siblings and I had cleaned out my mom’s house and I had rested up from too many months of being overwhelmed…summer was coming to a close and I hadn’t embraced or savored.

And here I am again…another summer has arrived and another vow has been made! Maybe this year it is different. Maybe all this recent reflection on aging and the constant reminders of how brief life truly is will actually cause me to pause and savor this most favorite season.

I still have the daily routines to follow and a dissertation to write. But, it is all about to change. I can feel it. Just three short years from now my last baby will be finished with high school. By that time both my boys will have left home for good. The time for me to stop and savor these moments is now. I’ll never get these moments again.

So in honor of June 1, 2010…a day I’ll never live again…I planted sage in my herb garden and put of pot of basil and a tomato plant on my deck to be lovingly tended each day. By having to water and care for these plants I hope I’m reminded to slow down and lovingly tend to the people in my life as well.

Robert Frost said it best: “There’s absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go very slow.”