Summer Lovely

The air in the room is warm and the closed blinds cast shadows across a still unmade bed at 3 p.m. I paw my way to the pillow, and the smell of sunblock and baby lotion intoxicates me. I press my eyes into the soft fibers of the pillowcase and I remember why I used to love this little cocktail of rest and heat called summer. Summers used to be a wide open Mason jar, clean and clear at first and then suddenly brimming with green grass and lightning bugs and finally all mud-smeared and full. The residue of long days holding melty popsicles, soft leather baseball mitts, and waning innocence. The day you have to trade in your free summer pass is not one you will remember, no one is fully aware it's being traded for air-conditioned office spaces and vacation days that require approval and paperwork. The trade is never fair and the loss never reclaimable. Baby Girl is sleeping for the moment and I am wishing her all of the pleasures of summers to come, all those and more that I get to experience vicariously as I am re-learning what it means to truly live in the moment, to bask in summer as a child.