TREENA MIELKE/On The Other Side
Summer is short lived, disappearing faster than an ice cream cone dropped onto a sidewalk that is so hot you have to walk quickly on it or the bottoms of your feet will get all blistered.
I love that kind of day.
I love walking on sidewalks where you kind of have to dance along because it’s so hot under your bare toes.
It’s good.
Sometimes dropped into this “gone in less than a heartbeat” type of scenario, there are red letter vacation days, devil may care, sleep in, afternoon siesta days where routine gets tossed out in the recycling along with yesterday’s news.
Not so in my life!
I, in fact, have no plans for such unplanned days.
This thought in itself is rather depressing; dark and dreary, existing on the lower level of thinking that rainy days, thunder, lightning and mosquitoes, all of which we’ve had in great abundance this year, exists.
In fact, trying to mow my lawn has been a mix of endurance, discipline and run for your life type of terror thanks, in part, to a healthy mix of the above.
First the thunder, then the lightning and finally the rain caused me to throw up my hands and seek shelter after only two minuscule sweeps of my electric mower the other night.
“Okay, I’m done, I say to no one in particular. I’m going in to watch a movie.”
But then I tried again mostly cause the lawn looked really stupid with all the long stuff in the middle and the rest sheared off in a circle.
On day 2 I tried to mow again and that was when the mosquitoes went on a relentless blood-sucking rampage feasting on my bare arms and legs with a vengeance that was totally uncalled for.
Once again, I gave up, grumbled to no one in particular, and went and watched the rest of my movie.
Luckily for me the summer is not completely about mosquitoes, rain and more of the same.
It’s about waiting!
Any word yet? Is she in labour? Are you in labour? This is the conversation in our family lately as we all wait for the lady in waiting to bring forth expectant grandchild number 5.
Nothing yet, but any day now. And it will be good.
And then the clouds and the mosquitoes and the rain won’t matter very much at all because a new child will have graced us with its presence, bringing with it all kinds of good things like hope, joy and love. The sleepless nights it will also, no doubt, bring belong solely to its parents.
And as if a new baby isn’t enough to turn an ordinary summer into an extra ordinary kind of happening, there is another good thing that is on the peripheral edge of my horizon.
A wedding. And I am to be one of the paparazzi, allowed to go shutter crazy, snapping the fleeting expressions of joy, excitement and love into my camera lens. And, hopefully I will produce pictures that are timely, in focus and worthy of being the memory keepers they are all meant to be so that when the bride is a wife pouring over a cookbook featuring 1001 ways to cook hamburger and the groom is the husband who just wants to watch the game with his buddies and a cold beer, they can “remember when” together.
And so as the mosquitoes swarm mercilessly and the rain drowns us all in sorrow, and headlines are made and lost and made again, I am forever grateful for the promise of new babies and the echo of wedding bells.
And sidewalks that burn the soles of your feet are a good thing as well. I’m still waiting for that to happen, too!