Our backyard, and other summertime musings

It is barely July, and already I feel so far away from the frenetic last weeks of the school year. For the most part, we are not bound by schedules in summer because I think there is great value in surrendering to the vast open promise of each day. If it is sunny, we will be outside, probably in water at some point. If it is not, we will still probably be outside, but if not, I think there is also value in my children learning how to cope with boredom. I don’t turn on the TV at all until I need to chop vegetables before dinner, and so my children are forced either to annoy each other or find something else to do. Suzannah has been reading and reading and reading, and if she’s not in my direct line of sight she is almost always sitting cross-legged on her bed with a book. Isaac might mope around and whine, “But Mommy, I don’t know what to play with,” but then he usually busies himself with a puzzle or his Duplos or one of the play cooking sets. This morning he turned his sister’s Strawberry Shortcake thermos into a “blaster” and informed me that one of his “guys” was stuck inside the spout, which, regrettably, was true. It’s still there, and his sister doesn’t know. I’ll deal with it later.

The largely unstructured time (with the exception of swimming lessons, and Saturday gymnastics) works against me a bit, though, as much as I need it. Without the distraction of the classroom -- the dynamics, the immediacy of teenagers and their needs -- I tend towards anxiety. I hang on to things, chew on them. I diagnose myself with too many things because I read something alarming on the internet, or I find myself stewing over a careless word that I wouldn’t bother so much with in, say, October or March. When something bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Last night I stayed awake far too late (not stewing, but reading), and when I finally went to bed, I couldn’t turn off my brain. Then, just for fun, I decided someone was absolutely trying to break into our house, so I prowled around fiercely in the dark for awhile, checking the locks and making sure my children were still breathing, which is a different anxiety, and at the back of all of that I wondered whether I was truly appreciating my summer the way I should be. Welcome to my crazy.

I do better when I take internet breaks, and it’s sad, but I actually schedule these -- starting on a specific day, with specific restrictions (e-mail is okay, Facebook isn’t, etc). I do better when I’m reading and writing and making sure I exercise each week, when I’m cooking good food and carving out time with my children, both together but also individually. I do better when I sleep, but I’m terrible at this. (I’m working on it. Kind of.) I do better when I can look back on even my unstructured days and recognize that they were lived well. For instance, things I want to remember about the past couple of weeks include: taking my daughter to Tacoma after her last day of second grade, eating lunch together and riding the Link. Buying her a book at the UW bookstore and a cookie dough cupcake afterwards. Reading with her, each of us with our own books, sprawled on a blanket under our huge tree in the front yard. Walking to Starbucks in the afternoons for afternoon treats -- cake pops and vanilla scones for the kids, coffee for me. Making huge salads of fresh local lettuce and roasted baby beets for dinner. Jogging along Puget Sound in the salty morning air. Spending time with my parents before and after their trip to Boston, watching home movies at Aaron and Morgan’s house (and showing my kids what Mommy looked like when she ran along the beach at Ocean Shores in 1988, at the age of nine). Taking the kids to the splash park. Eating dinner with friends on the Tacoma waterfront, sharing sushi with Becca in West Seattle, having coffee with a dear friend who’s moving to another city in a week or so. I want to hold and remember even the simplest things: waking slowly, kissing Matt before he leaves, pouring cereal for the kids and cooking an egg for myself (with greens if I’m ambitious), sitting with my mug of coffee in the living room and stealing a few pages of a book while the kids shriek and giggle and dump their toys on the family room floor.

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The last couple of days have been hot for the Pacific Northwest, and even though our little house doesn’t have air conditioning, I love the way the heat both slows us down and calls us out into the sunshine. I have not felt greatly motivated to, say, go for early-evening runs after spending the afternoon hours outside at the splash park, sweat trickling down my back before I jump through the water with my son (I’m that mom -- I make sure I’m good and soaked too before we make our tired way back to the car), but I do want to be outside all the time. The playground, the splash park, our own backyard. I’m never so in love with where we live than I am in the summer, when I turn my children loose outside and watch them tear through the sprinkler, turning their slide into a waterslide and shrieking their hellos to the neighbor boys. I know exactly where to put my favorite lawn chair depending on the time of day; I know when the morning shade will slide away up my legs and have me reaching for my sunglasses and iced tea or water. Today while Isaac munched on a cookie during a break from his play, I thought about all the books I’ve read in this backyard: the last few Harry Potter books; The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver; The Beet Queen, by Louise Erdrich; Faithful Place, by Tana French; At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O’Neill...there are others, of course, because we’ve lived in this house for over ten years now, but I have such specific memories of those novels and the way I sprawled in the backyard with them and let them carry me away on a summer day.

I remember staining our old deck, summer after summer, starting a year or two after we bought the house -- and I don’t miss it, either the deck or the staining. Not one tiny bit. I’m so in love with our simple concrete patio and our simple patio furniture; I just want to hang out back there all the time. I remember Suzannah’s first plastic little wading pool and her first little swimsuit -- a two-piece, because I couldn’t resist showing off her round toddler tummy. (I remember the day she slipped and fell on her face in the water, and how in my hurry to pick her up I dropped my camera in the pool. It never really recovered.) I remember sitting under our cherry tree while she climbed on her first little backyard play set and splashed in that same wading pool a year later, trying to read and take notes one of the books I was planning to teach during the next school year. The title page of that book still bears blue ballpoint scribbles, my daughter’s contribution to annotating the text. The following summer we squeezed into the wading pool together. I was pregnant with her brother, and that summer was the hottest I’d experienced in Washington; my relief came from letting my daughter pour buckets of water over me in the backyard before I led us both inside to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to nap.

Things have changed in the eleven years we’ve lived here, of course. We’ve added two children, a more permanent swing/play set, and a modest garden. We tore out the horrible rotting wooden deck and replaced it with a patio that requires nothing from me. Our immediate neighbors have added three boys of roughly the same ages as my children, and the old dogs plodding around their backyard (blind, deaf, one wearing an argyle sweater) have been replaced by four shrill and energetic miniature dachshunds. Our pug puppy has become the old dog, and now she is the one who hobbles around the backyard, fumbling her way back to the door because she can’t see it or hear us calling her.

But really, when I sit in our backyard, I am sitting outside time. There is only the sunshine, and the trees. The sound of the birds, a distant lawnmower. The scent of charcoals, grilling hamburgers, cut grass, sunscreen. The clink of the ice cubes in my glass of water or tea. Sometimes it startles me to remember my children as babies and toddlers, their unsteady legs wobbling across this grass, this yard. Here. Now they run, they run through the backyard, they open the gate and run around to the front where Matt is mowing, they open the sliding doors to run inside for a drink or a bathroom break or a toy. I deliver snacks and towels, I rub sunscreen into their flushed cheeks and spread it across their backs and legs, but mostly I stay on the sidelines. I can sip my ice water, sit for awhile, and read a few pages of my book. And while I’m grateful for these little moments of relative freedom, I thank God they are still young enough to call out, ”Watch me, Mommy!”

If I never have more than I have right now, it will be enough.