Summer

One of my Summer Resolutions was to update this blog at least once a week; obviously that hasn't happened, although here in the Pacific Northwest we start our summers later than the rest of the country, so while it may seem that we're halfway through, in truth summer decided to show up here only a week ago. Before that, I was at a conference in Colorado, and before that it was chilly and rainy and anyway I was curled up in the fetal position trying to process the end of a tremendously stressful school year.

So, here we are.

Maybe a few decades from now I'll think of summer as a time to go places, as a time for big trips, for getting away. And it's not that we don't go places, because we do love our summer trips, but right now they're always to Montana or Minnesota or both. There is no regret here for me, no wishing that we could be somewhere a little more grand, a little more exotic. Our families are in those places, and we have deep roots there, and we want our children to feel those connections, too.

So we have our annual road trip or two, and my love for road trips is well documented. But what I think I'll remember, what I want to remember about these summers in the Pacific Northwest with my little family, is how content I feel to just be present right here, where we are right now. I'm so happy, every day, just to feel the sun on my shoulders and smell sunscreen on my children's skin. What I want out of the summer is this: to sit on our falling-apart deck (our next home improvement project!) and read and watch my kids run through the sprinkler. Is there anything more perfect than the way an arc of water catches the sunlight and breaks into a million shining droplets as a child throws her body through them? What I want is to feel the sweat on the back of my neck, knowing there's nowhere else I need to be other than right here, or maybe right over there in the little wading pool because Suzannah has invited me to dip my feet in. She promises it will cool me off. What I want is to watch my son dig in the sandbox, where he sits and takes off his crocs and pours sand out of them, where he shakes sand out of his hair. He marches back and forth between the sandbox and the pool with a little plastic pail, because a sandbox filled with mud is a child's paradise. What I want is to watch Suzannah play with the neighbor boys in the yard, inventing games with complicated rules I can't understand; Isaac tries his hardest to keep up, covering his eyes and shouting numbers when one of them is counting for hide-and-seek or simply balling up his fists and shaking them with glee, stomping his fat little feet, totally just caught up in the moment. And when the game is just a little beyond him, he is happy to just stand in the middle of the action -- in the middle of the little inflatable pool -- with his arms outstretched, and holler, "MY pool! MY POOL!"

We welcomed summer on the Fourth of July with a picnic at Pike Place Market last week. This might become a Winslow Family Tradition; we did it last year and discovered that the market is surprisingly chill before lunch on the holiday. We bought piroshkis and baguettes with brie, shared chocolate croissants, picked up interesting sodas at the deli, and carried our little feast over to a sunny patch of grass across from the market, overlooking the water. From there we drove to Discovery Park, where Matt and the kids romped at the playground and I ran the Loop Trail. Back home, we grilled veggie burgers and corn on the cob and I sipped a gin-and-tonic and the kids played in the yard. It was all totally ordinary, and it was perfect.

Since then, I've tried to recreate that feeling -- that totally relaxed, content feeling that comes from being present and awake in the life I'm living, exactly where I'm at -- every day. Sometimes I feel the self-imposed pressure to do things with our summer, so I make plans to take the kids places -- the zoo, obviously (we have a membership!), or the Pacific Science Center, or a really great splash park. Other times, though, I remember that our backyard usually provides more than enough entertainment for two young kiddos and that more often than not, they are happy to play right here. Inflatable pool? Check. Swingset/slide/fort/sandbox? Check. Three boys next door who are outside about as often as my kids are? Check. Easy access to snacks, shade, and check-ins with mom? You got it.

I love this. Morning coffee I can drink slowly, and then, if we want, an afternoon walk to Starbucks for a cake pop. The whir of sprinklers in our neighborhood, the smell of charcoal on weekend afternoons. Eating berries by the handful.

So the paradox is this: time slows, delightfully so. Morning fog slips into afternoon sunshine. We follow simple routines. Sandwiches are made, sunscreen is applied, the pool is filled and emptied and filled again, naps are taken (maybe), stories are read. I feel like I have written a version of this very post at least once every summer since 2007, when Suzannah still fit in the sling on my hip and we walked through Metropolitan Market on hot July afternoons, sampling slivers of peach or eating strawberry muffins. Metropolitan Market closed shortly after Isaac was born -- I never once even carried him inside -- but the feeling is the same.

On the other hand, it moves so fast, still. I want to notice everything, everything. I carry my journal with me everywhere and scribble down lines, little things my daughter says, try to capture where we are and what we're eating and drinking and what we see. Isaac surprises me every day with new phrases, sentences, delights, new ways of becoming the person he is. Suzannah is six, seemingly verging on teenagerhood some days -- and then again she is still my little girl, still my baby, and the boundaries between us are still so nebulous somehow in the ways she reaches for my hand or leans against me when she's tired or bursts through the bathroom door totally casually when I would really prefer some alone-time. At the end of the summer I know I am going to look back on these moments and wonder where they went, all the while marveling at these two fantastic little people who make these moments. At the end of the summer, I'll have a first-grader and a little boy much closer to three than two. Today, I just want to hold them where they are -- not to stifle them, not to hold them back, but to notice them, to be with them, and to be awake enough in this life to see it all.