Early July
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| Island Carousel at Solomon Pond Mall |
On Monday, the kids rode the carousel together at a mall in Massachusetts. It's funny how I never cared for malls as a child, and now feel strangely grateful that any remain in an age of box stores and amazon.
This is the first time Petra is starting to look like another kid hanging out with Wally. It can be the clothes she's wearing or a micro-expression and it happens incrementally, transition from toddler to little kid, but it's one of those things you catch sight of it all at once.
In the morning before the mall trip we sang Hamilton songs with my nieces before my sister's family headed up to in-laws in Vermont.
In the late afternoon my dad and I took the kids to sprinklers nearby. Music was pouring out of someone's house across a little creek by a skate park. Petra set up a tent and Wally danced in an empty pavilion.
Yesterday was a slow day, too. Spent at home and at the library. Checking out a big stack of way too many books for our week here. A trip to a new playground with a giant hill slide after dinner. On the drive back Wally insisted it had to be Wednesday. We told him it was still only Tuesday. He said if that's true, and we've really only been here two days, then something must have flipped, and he's now getting into the spirit of summer.
Ahhh- I love how you've captured the slow and easy days so perfectly here. And that transition to childhood, so slow yet so fast, like a flicker, and Wally's innocent insights, not knowing but I'm sure totally knowing that this THIS is summer vacation.
ReplyDeleteThank you...a flicker is the perfect way to describe it...stop-motion time, and then, poof, someone entirely new.
ReplyDeleteOh how I love this account of summer days! And Wally's sense of time slowing down to that meandering pace where you lose track of the days of the week. That is bliss!
ReplyDeleteAnd I adore the flash of Petra as little kid. Those incremental changes that are suddenly revealed in a single moment.
You've captured it so beautifully, the slow summer days that allow you to recognize the time that's already rushed past. Slides and sprinklers, air-conditioned malls, a pile of books that may not get read. Agenda-free and easy. Wonderful!!
This is strange! Something very strange going on...I had written responses but I do not see them posted. I wasn't at my computer so I guess something went wrong. Thank you both so very much for being there to listen and reflect back on the slow easy days of summer...losing track..yes it really is bliss! We are back in the city now for three rushed days of work and packing then off to the West coast on Wednesday. I have a feeling those days of sprinklers and piles of library books may be the most slow and still and present of the summer but maybe not. Maybe they helped teach me how to bring that stillness with me a little bit. I have lost the yoga/meditation ritual in the morning so far, but it's in the back of my mind.
ReplyDeleteReally, thank you for you both for reading and responding. There is something about knowing the words reached you that is so tremendously reassuring.