Summer seems to be sifting away. It's July 21st so by the calendar, summer is only halfway gone, but for those of us who have put off doing class prep until August 1st, summer is looking decidedly shorter.
Today is the first hot day we've had in weeks. Mostly it's been unseasonably cool, rain and clouds and wind washing through. We've chosen to spend most of our time at home this summer, partly because Holden is closed, partly because, at eleven months, you wouldn't be a particular joy to travel with. So the summer feels more imagistic than narrative. When I think of the last weeks I think of...
Your two upper teeth pressing through the guns, the thin open bar of space between them.
Your bare toes, the tops dirty with grime from carpets and hard wood, now that you're beginning to crawl.
The figures of the wooden ark spread out on the carpet (anteater, peacock, the chunky elephant) and you in the midst of them while the World Cup plays on TV. Men in a line, hands covering groins. Men rolling on the green grass, miming pain. The handsome former soccer players who sit behind a clean desk during the halftime break, trying to sound articulate. The plastic wrapper of a string cheese parted, your mouth upturned for the bits Dada offers you as he watches.
Princess underwear hanging from the shower rod, from the line outside; damp princess underwear stuffed in plastic bags and sent home with your sister.
A dragonfly, briefly lighting in the middle of my chest as I pushed you in the stroller across Plum street.
Tiny cymbals in tiny hands.
A cardboard flat filled with blueberries. A bit of bark hanging from your lip. Your sister bragging about how her bucket is way more full than mine.
Afternoon walks with you in the Ergo because your napping has been an absolute shit show. How aware I am, as we walk, of how loud it is here in the summer. The steady drone of cars passing, the louder gravel-growl of the motorcycles, lawnmowers ebbing and flowing, barks behind screen doors, rocks under my tennis shoes, the tapping cane of a man with Elvis sunglasses, kids yelling orders as they round the bases in Way Park, conversations drifting over porch railings. I track each sound by the way it prompts your eyelids up again. We move into another pocket of quiet and down they sink, that subtle shade of lavender behind the pink. Long lashes. Your cheek. Mosquito bite on the bridge of your nose.
Animals in picture books with half-moons of of fake fur and fake scale and fake paw. The tiny scratch of your fingernail across those surfaces in the dim light of 6:15am.
Your study of the holes on the child's carpenter tool box. Working screws with primary colored heads into each open hole. Or fitting the neon plastic shapes (orange circle, green square, pink cross) into the corresponding gaps at the top of the toy pail.
Thisbe, lying perpendicular in her bed, Minnie Mouse nightgown pulled up to reveal bug-bitten thighs and Ariel pull-up asking "Mama, what does it feel like to die?"
A hawk in the grass by the railroad tracks. Wind ruffling its feathers. No signs of death besides the flies crawling in its eyes. A rabbit head on the basketball court in Way Park. The bloody stem of the neck.
Cherries cut into bits on your white high chair tray. Bits of banana. Bit of bread with melted cheese. Scrambled eggs, pale yellow on a blue plate, cut into segments, strands of steam rising.
We are lucky. For these days of warmth. For the time and strength to see them as they pass.
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