There was this summer in my long lost past that keeps returning to me as the perfect summer, and I've spent a lot of time lately pondering the reason why.
I guess the year doesn't matter, but if I try hard, I can pin it down to 1995 or 1996. My son was about five years old and my daughter was about a year and a half. How that came to be the ideal summer, I don't know, but it has.
There was a lot going on then, though when I think of it, I feel calm. I remember a calmness.
I was one year away from severing my relationship with my daughter's father. I lived for a very short time, just a few days, away from him that summer after a drunken brawl. We had both beaten on each other, his injuries appearing the worst, and he gave in to the impulse to call the police. They took me away in handcuffs and ordered me to stay away from him until after the hearing. Very odd thing...I "moved" next door for the week or so that it took for my case to be heard. While he worked during the day, I went on with my life as usual, then I returned to the neighbor's house before he got home.
The neighbor I was staying with was a big country girl I'll call...Betty. Betty was a single mother raising a teenage girl and a near-teenage boy who was notorious for his bad behavior, though with me, he was very docile, willing and eager to please, albeit quite manipulative. His story came out a few years later, and it was tragic having to do with his biological father and some pretty twisted tales of what went on when Betty wasn't around, but for now, it's enough to say that I was pulled into their world in a huge way. I listened to classic rock and Betty was country and western. I did PTA meetings and Betty made frequent withdrawals at the food bank. I learned the thrill of sitting in the backyard playing cut the can with bb guns at Betty's, and together, we took our little corner of the housing project and turned it into a nature retreat. I think at one count we had in excess of twenty flower beds. Betty knew how to save a buck, and each one she saved, she spent in the gardening department of the local K-Mart.
She took me that summer to meet a woman named Charlotte. Charlotte was in her seventies. Her home smelled of fresh baked goods and was filled with wood shop treasure and needlepoint. She had gardens galore, both flower and vegetable. We never went home empty handed from Charlotte's, and following a visit, the canning supplies came out at Betty's to put up our gifted bounty. We made spaghetti sauce and salsa that summer. The sauce, Betty helped me put on the stove on a Friday, then she went camping with her boyfriend, leaving me there to sleep in catnaps so that I could get up and stir once an hour. We cooked it for three days before it went into jars. It was the next best sauce I ever tasted. The best was put up in my kitchen last summer.
I remember a lot of country music that magical summer, but I also remember a lot of quiet. After I went to court (a hundred, thirty-six dollar fine and an eighteen-month suspended sentence) and was able to move back in with my daughter's father and "our" other two boys (his by a previous marriage), I let it be known that I was not going to give up all of my freedom. I had a taste, and I planned on keeping it. I would get up at five-thirty, take him to work so that could have possession of our single vehicle to go where I needed or wanted to go, and three nights a week, I would hike through the woods behind our house. It was about a three-hour round trip, up and over the hill and back again, and there, I found the same smells and sounds that I experienced while with Betty. Betty was nature to me. Betty was the earth. Betty could really get under my skin with the shameless way she worked the system, but she knew how to surround herself with a pretty awesome kind of reality. Worries were seldom more than passing inconveniences with her, and I learned that there. It didn't last long. By the time the flowers bedded down for the winter, I was back in turmoil, but the season stayed with me on some level. And these days, I remember it because so much of that feeling is back again.
My son just called and needs a ride home, so I'll have to finish this later. Or not. I could very easily sit on this porch, listen to the wind rustle the leaves on the trees, the chimes blow in the breeze, the birds sing. I could watch the dog napping and dreaming beside me, or I could walk around the house and take a nap on the hammock. Time moves slowly now, almost stands still, and I'm grateful I have another summer to compare it to.
Till later....
I guess the year doesn't matter, but if I try hard, I can pin it down to 1995 or 1996. My son was about five years old and my daughter was about a year and a half. How that came to be the ideal summer, I don't know, but it has.
There was a lot going on then, though when I think of it, I feel calm. I remember a calmness.
I was one year away from severing my relationship with my daughter's father. I lived for a very short time, just a few days, away from him that summer after a drunken brawl. We had both beaten on each other, his injuries appearing the worst, and he gave in to the impulse to call the police. They took me away in handcuffs and ordered me to stay away from him until after the hearing. Very odd thing...I "moved" next door for the week or so that it took for my case to be heard. While he worked during the day, I went on with my life as usual, then I returned to the neighbor's house before he got home.
The neighbor I was staying with was a big country girl I'll call...Betty. Betty was a single mother raising a teenage girl and a near-teenage boy who was notorious for his bad behavior, though with me, he was very docile, willing and eager to please, albeit quite manipulative. His story came out a few years later, and it was tragic having to do with his biological father and some pretty twisted tales of what went on when Betty wasn't around, but for now, it's enough to say that I was pulled into their world in a huge way. I listened to classic rock and Betty was country and western. I did PTA meetings and Betty made frequent withdrawals at the food bank. I learned the thrill of sitting in the backyard playing cut the can with bb guns at Betty's, and together, we took our little corner of the housing project and turned it into a nature retreat. I think at one count we had in excess of twenty flower beds. Betty knew how to save a buck, and each one she saved, she spent in the gardening department of the local K-Mart.
She took me that summer to meet a woman named Charlotte. Charlotte was in her seventies. Her home smelled of fresh baked goods and was filled with wood shop treasure and needlepoint. She had gardens galore, both flower and vegetable. We never went home empty handed from Charlotte's, and following a visit, the canning supplies came out at Betty's to put up our gifted bounty. We made spaghetti sauce and salsa that summer. The sauce, Betty helped me put on the stove on a Friday, then she went camping with her boyfriend, leaving me there to sleep in catnaps so that I could get up and stir once an hour. We cooked it for three days before it went into jars. It was the next best sauce I ever tasted. The best was put up in my kitchen last summer.
I remember a lot of country music that magical summer, but I also remember a lot of quiet. After I went to court (a hundred, thirty-six dollar fine and an eighteen-month suspended sentence) and was able to move back in with my daughter's father and "our" other two boys (his by a previous marriage), I let it be known that I was not going to give up all of my freedom. I had a taste, and I planned on keeping it. I would get up at five-thirty, take him to work so that could have possession of our single vehicle to go where I needed or wanted to go, and three nights a week, I would hike through the woods behind our house. It was about a three-hour round trip, up and over the hill and back again, and there, I found the same smells and sounds that I experienced while with Betty. Betty was nature to me. Betty was the earth. Betty could really get under my skin with the shameless way she worked the system, but she knew how to surround herself with a pretty awesome kind of reality. Worries were seldom more than passing inconveniences with her, and I learned that there. It didn't last long. By the time the flowers bedded down for the winter, I was back in turmoil, but the season stayed with me on some level. And these days, I remember it because so much of that feeling is back again.
My son just called and needs a ride home, so I'll have to finish this later. Or not. I could very easily sit on this porch, listen to the wind rustle the leaves on the trees, the chimes blow in the breeze, the birds sing. I could watch the dog napping and dreaming beside me, or I could walk around the house and take a nap on the hammock. Time moves slowly now, almost stands still, and I'm grateful I have another summer to compare it to.
Till later....
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