Summertime

The dam is barely holding.

You can see it behind their eyes, the excitement building somewhere in the growing brains - brains that for nine months have soaked in information, videos, gossip, rules about what is cool and not (I don't even know if 'cool' is a 'cool' word anymore). These cerebral cortexes not only look like sponges but they act like sponges - they soak up anything in the near vicinity, whether good or bad.

Sponges are some of the coolest things on the planet. They are considered animals even though, to me, they look more like plants. Sponges, although animals, do not have a circulatory system, a nervous system, or a digestive system. In other words, they don't think, they don't feel and they don't really eat - they basically take up space, waving back and forth in their territory waiting for some kind of food they can envelope. Our neighbors' dog is really a land sponge. It does not behave as if it has a brain; if it moves at all, it is so slow that the squirrels stop in front of its face and have a good chat knowing that Harvey couldn't catch them if he tried; the dog has also lost the hunting instinct - Harvey's idea of the thrill of the chase is to blow a fly off the bowl of yummy dog food placed directly in front of its muzzle so that he only has to lift his head to lick out the crunchy tidbits before it goes back to his non-stop rest. This dog makes a koala bear seem like a whirling dervish (a koala averages 20 hours of sleep per day).

Sponges, as I was to learn, can survive at the very depths of the oceans; some of them have been found 8,800 meters under the surface of the ocean. For those of you who live in non-metric countries, that's five and a half miles from anyplace where the sun shines. Imagine the pressure at five-miles down. Imagine living in a place where darkness is swallowed - swallowed like a doggy treat.

I don't really know how I got off on this tangent; I think it was that I was thinking about how children's brains are like sponges - yes, that's it - like sponges. Ocean sponges (there are a few fresh water ones also) don't really soak up water. The water simply passes through it where the cells of the sponge gather food and oxygen from the water. Children's brains sit in the steadily flowing informational flow of school picking out bits of things from the instruction that feed them - help them grow.

But now, the brains of the children feel full. Nah, not really. Their glassy-eyed expression is from staring out the windows of the school at the absolutely gorgeous weather. Like moths to a lightbult, the children's face float towards the sun shining through the dust-streaked glass. Their very apparent sense of freedom is only a week away.

As my children come home from school, their homework is dropped in a screaming heap by the back door and the dam bursts; they are like screaming eagles streaking out the back door to play in the back yard. Sometimes I watch them from inside the house, through my own dust streaked window, remembering how summer (and summer school vacation) is truly what makes life go round.

I have often wondered how summer got its name. From what I gather from the incredible world of the web, the word 'summer' may come from the Norse god 'Sumarr' who is the god of summer. I would guess that Sumarr was a really short god. In case your not following, Norway has a really short summer.

It's been too long since I've blogged.

Almost every good thing happens in summer. The heat returns from its vacation to the south - the sun is a snowbird, I think. The rains come to the deserts; the cows start calving; the crops grow; the Monarch Butterflies begin their return from Mexico. Road construction continues in earnest.

Okay, it's not the greatest thing, but that's what happens when you live in a northern latitude - ice and snow eat roads for breakfast.

So, I watch my girls through the dusty window remembering the times when I was little, the last day of school had come. Ripping off what was left of my paper bookcovers, I turned them in with great pleasure. I no longer needed science text books, math workbooks and English quizzes. Now, I could simply learn from nature. Summertime is the time when nature teaches us more than classrooms probably ever can. Nature teaches us how to care for creation. Nature teaches us how to survive. Nature teaches us how to breathe in fresh air and exhale all of the conditioned air that comes with indoor living.

But too often now, we have taken the shape of the living room sofa. We continually express in our brains that 'I should go outside for a walk or a run' but the sofa seems to have a seatbelt that keeps us in place helping us to believe that tomorrow is really the best day to let our brains go for a walk in the great outdoor.

This summer, I'm not just going to watch the girls smile through the window or see them run quickly through sprinkler water. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to reinvent myself as a child of the summer where my brain soaks in the sun preparing it with rest for any future possibilities. Summer is a time of play and rest.

Play and rest this summer.