Summer that Was
/Hey, September, how yoo dooin'? September, here's what: I'm happy you're here. You always bring with you the smell of U-Hauls and giddy college students, the sounds of wonky high school trombone players, "Haa-yaaang on, Sloopeh, Slooopeh, Hang Onnnn!", freshly cut football fields. Your days start to slope, the sun waning, 7:30, 7:15, on on on down to 6:30 p.m. and by the time your turn is almost up, there is a coziness to the night and an acquaintedness with new school textbooks, while still a hopefulness that there are big things still to accomplish this year.
But let me tell you about this past summer, September, the one you're sweeping up for me in your wake. I'll be frank. I thought this summer 2010 was going to suck. I thought I was going to be all soaking bedsheets with milk and wandering zombie-like around my creeky home at 3 a.m. But this past summer was awesome in its unremarkableness. It was just lovely, and smooth. We didn't go anywhere spectacular (Newport? Cleveland, anyone?). I don't even think we went out to brunch somewhere splendid. We just ate a thousand popsicles on our cruddy patio, watched the airplanes overhead, and wasted a lot of sprinkler water on ourselves, which, if you ask me, wasn't a waste at all.
Sure, it was no party when Loverpants got pneumonia. And the hematoma thing I could have done without. But I'll always remember Fourth of July, sitting with Brother Greg watching the "Boston Pops" on our couch and talking about how his blanket and law textbook were waiting for him on the Common, but instead he was sitting watching the performance with us on TV.
I'll remember chicken parm night with my old man and Julie, defining bummerooski with my mom and Goobs, and just being so grateful and shmoopy to come home from OH and come back to my life with my hubby.
I'll remember getting to know the girl that Baby Girl is now at an articulate 2.5 years-old, how she used "I'm sulking" totally appropriately, how her sapphire eyes, framed by her pixie cut, look out at a world and see not a complicated planet but only the ripe cherry tomatoes in the box garden, the sequined pink slippers on sale at Target, the travesty that is the removal of the "Shrek 3" billboard on Gallivan Blvd.
Most obviously, though, I'll remember the ease and wonder I felt for 104 days of meeting this new Little Man in my life. I don't know what angel interceded in Heaven so that I could have this little boy with a halo all summer long, but I am grateful. He is so marvelously adaptable that holding him - which I try to do as many seconds of the day as I can - is a tranquilizer, it's possibly the best drug a hospital lets you leave with, no prescription necessary. Just hold Little Man for a minute, ohhhh those soft little cheeks and fluttery eyelashes! And you will know.
So all that is to say that life until now has been wonderful, and welcome to you, September 2010. 30 more days in this month of turning 30. Yahoo.
*** Some snaps that our new friend, the talented Dr. Paul Yoo took at Boston Temple in the Fenway.
