Summer. I fondly remember the summers of my youth. The summers of baseball in the back yard and swimming in the neighbors pool. Lazy afternoons with a pile of books to keep me company under a shady tree. Catching fireflies in the evening and trying to sneak a couple minutes more of playtime before my mother called to us for baths and bed.
Spending time at our cousins and Grandparents, picking strawberries and eating petunias. (Ahh, petunias. I remember their spicy taste and aroma just like it were yesterday.) Choosing up sides with my cousins and racing like madmen around the blocks on bikes competing to win whatever crazy game we had thought up. Walking to the neighborhood grocer with a small account book in hand. I was always amazed they let us walk out with groceries and we never gave them any money. Just the little book of accounts and receipts. So different from the "big" city we lived in.
Getting up at 5 am to get my grandfather off to work and then a short stroll to morning Mass. I used to love sitting on the porch of the Convent, helping the nuns prepare for fall classes. They always gave us holy cards. I had a huge collection. Almost as big as some of my brothers baseball card collections. And just as dear to my heart. I never did find them when we closed up my parents home.
Summer should be a time of pleasure and leisure. Of innocence and play. And especially of boredom. I remember the best parts of summer springing from those two little sentences heard 'round the world in every language. "I'm bored. There's nothing to do!" Those feelings of boredom inspired more creative and spontaneous play than any x-box or iphone ever could.
I remember those summers fondly and yet those summers were filled with boredom. Sweet, and heavy like the foreboding of an afternoon storm. And then the sun shone from our bright faces as we rose to the occasion with another new game to play, craft to make or business to explore. (We all envisioned ourselves as budding young millionaires.) Boredom was the catalyst and our imaginations soared among the stars.
The lazy, crazy, BORING days of summer. I wonder......
Hey Kathleen! You've spurred my own memories of summer as a child, playing "war" up and down the alleyways of the neighborhood, creating fantastical baseball games in my head in the backyard, climbing over everything, eating honeysickle! Dad planting the garden! The grapevine and the fig tree! A ripe plum at the end of a hot august evening.
One of the reasons I'm so good at customer service is that I genuinely have great love for people...
It's also fun to be surrounded by very supportive co-workers--maybe the other foot hasn't dropped yet but I'm being treated like a superstar!
The chanting is good. I haven't finished the buddha in the mirror book yet. I hope I'm not chanting wrong!
What's the om chant from the musical Hair? KNow anything about that?
Learning the lesson from the adversity--a basic taoist tenet!
Anyway, always cool to hear from you. Your collage work is still amazing!
Mike
Posted by: Mikeferruggia | July 07, 2009 at 09:45 PM
What a beautiful and beautifully written essay on childhood summers, its boredom and its delights. It reminds me to speak more of the positive aspects of boredom on my ThePowerOfBoredom.com Further along, I may ask you if I can quote from it.
Posted by: LetitiaS | July 08, 2009 at 12:36 PM
Ahh yes, when 7/11 had pinball machines and Pacman. We would go in our jammies and line the quarters up along the top of the glass, next to our Snickers bars and be set for hours. Then we'd go home and listen to Elton John and the Beegees, and Donna Summer. We'd pretend our hairbrushes were microphones. But at some point we'd get bored, and go swim in Marsha's too-cold pool, and play Marco Polo. And the days lasted forever.
Posted by: DQ's Windmill | July 08, 2009 at 05:53 PM
Days of growing up by the ocean... walking on the beach, walking everywhere barefoot... those ocean skies. Yes, I remember the boredom, the restlessness, but when you have art it is hard to be bored for long!
Posted by: rivergardenstudio | July 08, 2009 at 07:20 PM
Couldn't agree more. Yesterday three different people said "time's going so fast" to me. It was mostly in reference to kids getting bigger, but I know even in my 30s I could feel time starting to speed up.
It did move soooo slowly during those early school years and esp. summers.
Now I LONG to be bored. Well, not really bored, but to have endless hours stretch out in front of me to do as I wish.
Posted by: K a b l o o e y | July 10, 2009 at 09:11 AM