The Gift of Slow Summer Days
Have you ever noticed how each season seems to move at its own pace? Energizing, quick-moving Spring days melt into slower, hotter Summer afternoons. Parents try to get home from work earlier and stretch the extra hours of evening light into magical moments with their kids. Especially when you have school aged children, there can be a tendency to pack your summer with vacations and travel. There is a place for that, and it certainly benefits your kids to expose (and you) to expose them to new sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Picture the young family taking their toddler to the beach and the boardwalk for the first time or the one with slightly older kids taking them across the country or to Europe. These trips can form magical memories if you plan them right and remember to plan the trip for everyone in your family—not just the grownups.
But there is equal magic to be found in backyard barbecues, trying a new restaurant in your home town, hosting family friends for dinner, and encouraging the kids to try to catch as many lightning bugs as they can during golden hour. I think that in our striving culture it can be easy to forget that these moments are just as magical for our kids as seeing the sights in a new town. It is easy as parents to get caught up in the comparison game without even thinking about it. Wow, so many of my friends are on such great trips with their kids this summer. I wonder if there’s still time for me to book something amazing…maybe I’ll just get a head start on planning a trip for Christmas.
Spending so many of my years surrounded by children in my classroom and now spending the best years surrounded by own children at home has taught me that we can all benefit from being more childlike. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take that trip you’ve been thinking about. You absolutely should, and you should fully enjoy the experience while you are there. But if you are in a season of quiet backyard moments, enjoy that fully, too. Don’t skip ahead mentally to the next great trip. Take the time to reflect on the life you want and write down how you will work towards those goals. How much more beautiful is a life spent enjoying the everyday than a life spent working away the everyday so that you can one day go somewhere to escape? Escape is not the point of life. Living is the point.
This summer I’ve found joy in flowers that bloomed later than the others, when most had faded and fallen to the ground. I’ve found joy in cups of coffee sipped slowly by lamplight in my living room before my kids got up. I’ve found joy in making the time to reflect on and write about this beautiful life that I have been gifted the chance to make and to live. There is joy to be found all around you in these last slow days of summer. You just have to remember to look.
