The dappled leaves overhand the shards of brownish-green grass while the sun refuses to set without a fight. The chain link fence glistens with sunlight and water droplets while the click-click-click of the neighbor's sprinkler and the birdsongs serenade us in our backyard.
Overhead, the sky is cornflower blue, deepening and turning a silvery-gold, while mere wisps of clouds trail by. The air is heavy with woodsmoke from the fire my 11 year old started in our old, never used, chimenea. At my feet is our aging Daisy dog, traumatized but clean and fluffy from her bath today. I rest comfortably in the patio chair that was my grandmother's, feet up on an old metal table, breathing in the scene around me.
My son, newly shorn with a Mohawk--his preferred summer haircut--has a hatchet in hand and is whacking pieces of wood into shards with an energy that shows his age. His incessant chatter while breaking wood peppers the air as ash from the newspaper he just shoved into the chimenea showers on us. I'm not sure what he's saying; in fact, I'm not sure he's even talking to me. He's proud of his developing muscles and strength, and he's eager to show me what a man he's becoming.
My husband, the perpetual piddler, is trying to coerce our sprinkling system into working. He cannot sit still and relax; he's in constant motion. He too is talking to himself, and in this moment, his voice is part of the song of the evening. He can never simply sit and inhale a summer day or evening; instead, there's always another project to complete. But he smiles deeply and gives me information about our irrigation system I won't remember past the moment.
Ten months of a year, I spend behind the walls of a stone building, looking out windows, wishing for time outside (unless it's snowing or raining). Between the time my work is temporarily finished and the time to start dinner, a few mere hours of outside time are allotted to me. For me, summer is an out-of-doors time-from morning until dark, watching leaves ripple in the wind and bees, wasps, and other flying insects cavorting on air. Cotton dances on light, tickling breezes; birds swoop in and out, busily building nests or seeking food for their babies.
Peace descends.
