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Summer Girl

My friend, Natalie coined the phrase Summer Girl. It’s perfect.  It’s perfect for me and my summer birthday. It’s perfect for a kid free from school and homework. It’s perfect for the teacher relishing the freedom from lesson plans, grading and administration demands. While some people whine about the heat and humidity, I love longer days, warmer weather and giving in to lure of pools and beaches. 

My childhood was spent on my bicycle riding around the neighborhood, to the library, and to the town playground activities where I made pot holders, lanyards, mosaic trivets.  As a teen a participated in the local summer stock theater.  Rehearsals were most evening in July and August. I never had much of role in the play but I did all the backstage jobs. I had fun of being part of the production and going to the after parties at the local diner.

As a young mother, summer mornings were about chores, tasks and summer school packets for the kids, leaving the afternoons free for the pool, kids yelling ‘cannonball’ before a jumping in the pool. It was all about the sunscreen, the tubes and swimmies, lots of snacks and tons and tons of wet towels left in heaps all over the yard.

There’s a natural dip in most work activity during the summer months and there’s a constant wave of people making vacation plans. So corporations embrace summer Fridays with half days or even a four-day work week.  My favorite job was with a nonprofit organization. Projects and events moved at a frenetic pace during the fall, winter and spring. The summer work was mundane.  Creating and filing reports and planning for the all excitement that would start anew in the fall.

Of course, Summer 2020 is very different, Covid 19 has seen to that. Life seems to be without punctuation.  Summer camp for the grandkids; cancelled.  Walking to the library with the kids; cancelled.  The visits to playgrounds in the local area, cancelled.  Our summer vacation to the beach which has always started with a late Saturday afternoon rainbow, as if the beach was excited to welcome us back, is in serious jeopardy.

Summer needs to be special.  It needs to be about play and relaxing. Summer calls me to the water’s edge for the swim and the sand. I take a pass on the Frisbee games.  I could never get that plastic saucer to sail into the air and catching it was near impossible.  My grandchildren have learned to dream because I tell them that all seagulls are named Jonathan Livingston, after book written in the 1960’s.

Covid 19 has taught me that a Summer Girl is a deep internal drive. A Summer Girl knows the value of re-creation as distinguished from recreation.  Making a plan to learn something new and gather new ambition for the fall. We have no idea, what shape the fall will take this year. I worried for my grandchildren that the fall would come and the lockdown would have stolen those lazy, hazy days of summer from them. It is of utmost importance that children know Summer with its spontaneity, surprises and homemade tents.

Instead I’m watching my grandchildren find these skills for themselves.  One makes a list of required activities for each day and checks them off at completion. Others set up an elaborate restaurant with a handwritten menu representing the food pyramid in fake food. The maître ‘d for the Toy Café welcomed me to my table, set up for social distancing.  It was inside which is contrary to the current state regulations but it was rainy day.  The wait staff was charming and the service prompt.  I was lucky to be an honored guest because there was a long line of dolls, action figures and stuffed animals who failed to make reservations. Hurrah! The children understand whimsy and joy. They are formulating plans and asking: “Can we have an outside movie night? Let’s have an ice cream for breakfast day?

How do I make summer triumphant during a lockdown? How do I share with my grandkids the joy of re-creating yourself without the punctuation of an alarm clock and lots of other people’s rules? 

I watch as they run from the pool to set up a board game. Wet feet run into the house to get the bag of chips.  Once again, I am treated to tons and tons of wet towels in damp heaps all over the deck as they gather around the table to play and snack.

It doesn’t need me.  Summer is a self-evident truth.