Summer Jam

The crickets softly chirp; warm air wafts in through the windows that stand open. The light is fading. It is quiet in my home, but it is a different kind of quiet. It is the quiet of peace, of warm chests rising and falling, of sweet breath and long lashes resting on plump cheeks. It is a silence that can, and will, be broken. This is peace.

I sometimes feel as if I have an obligation to write here of things that are sad, to write about the parts that make my heart ache. But the truth is, right now, this summer, I am sublimely happy. My heart soars. Greg is home, we are waking each day with an agenda lightly filled with things that we want to do. We eat three meals a day together, our children laugh, they relish in each others' company. This joy, this lightness, it is infectious. I want to know how I can bottle it, how I can make it last.

I wonder this, and I said it aloud to Greg the other night. What makes this different, this summer? Why is it that each night, after our children are tucked in and asleep, we can each look around and decide what it is that we want to do, and do it? I sit at my machine and sew, I take material and I envision something new to wear for myself or a child and I begin to tinker. I don't think about whether the living room has toys on the floor, or what we'll have for supper tomorrow night. Because it's today, and I want to sew. Greg is the same. I want to can this along with my blueberry jam and my dilly beans, and I don't see why I can't. But somehow, in fall, it always changes.

I look at myself, right at this moment in time, and the sadness feels distant, and I wonder if I should be feeling sad about this, or guilty that I am allowing myself to stand at a distance from it. Just two nights ago Liam appeared at the top of the stairs, with a box of kleenex in his hand, his face wet with tears. He was sad about Charlotte, he missed her. My heart did ache, then, for her, for me, for him.

Happiness, though, is a comfortable blanket, and I shall lie under it for a while, I think.

Tomorrow I gather my flock and prepare for a cross-country adventure, just mama and kids. The older two children have prepared themselves a backpack to keep themselves busy with on the two lengthy flights; I will entertain myself with the project of getting Fiona Clementine to sleep surrounded by new and interesting faces and novel sounds to boot. Greg's flight, which he took four days ago, had little television screens in the back of each seat on their Toronto-Edmonton leg of the journey. I am begging the gods for those same little screens on my flight. If they are there, I am golden.

When we're there, we'll meet up with Greg, and we'll see a lot of family. But we will also have the chance to steal away to the mountains, just the five of us. It will be our first trip with just our immediate family and Fiona Clementine. Our first public showing with our new prize. We'll take her to the crystal Rocky Mountain lakes that bring us so much peace, and let her dip her little toes into the glacial waters and know the freshest of fresh air. We'll smell Charlotte in the breeze, and see her in the sunlight. We'll wish she could be with us.

Until I return...