Gratitude Sunday: Summer

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was born old and grew steadily older every year.  I reveled in responsibility and reliability was my middle name. Summer was always something of a bother ... a time when too many people were unavailable ... off traipsing about the woods and beaches of the world.  This summer I almost got it.  Living by a lake with a friend who's an avid kayaker meant lovely afternoons on the lake ... but usually only late afternoons ... after a productive day.

But Friday we took off at 11 ... and "took off" is an interesting term since I'm not "taking off" from anything.  But, take off we did and spent the entire day kayaking, swimming and doing hot rock therapy (translation: laying flat on a baking rock) and then repeating the process all over again.  We found a perfect cove and named it "Summer's End."  About half-way through the process, I felt myself unwinding, relaxing into the day, purring in the sun.

That's what summer does.  It gives us hot days that force us to "chill out," "stay cool" and find every opportunity to indulge in the extreme pleasure offered by a cool body of water on a hot day.  It reminds us that everything ... all that responsibility, all that work, all those chores ... will wait for us but joy shouldn't be postponed.  I got a call this week ... a cousin died.  We had only spent a few times together as kids so we weren't close but it was one more reminder that time for joy and the pleasures of summer is just as important as chores.

Yesterday the temperature dropped into the 70s and stayed there all day.  We'll have more hot days but it was an indicator that summer is winding down.  While it lasts, I'm going to savor the pleasures of "chilling out" even if I have to write in the dust on the table:  Gone Kayaking.