Summer has always been my favorite season... even though it's the shortest and time seems to fly from Memorial Day to Labor Day... I love it because it has the longest days that many have been filled with crystalline water under a cerulean sky punctuated with searing white light and fragranced with salt and tanning oil. The sounds of ice cubes clinking in glasses or gushing in an ice chest or skimming around in an ice cream maker mixed with the melody played by gulls over head and underscored by crickets under porches...the tastes of berries picked fresh and the feel of browning skin under the sun and the reflections of white sand on sunglasses and perfect sunsets and hot starry nights and the smiles that light the darkness because they always promised another perfect summer day ahead... these have been and always will be my sights, sounds, tastes and feelings of summer.
I have some precious images of past summers seared into my memories forever and look forward each year of adding a new chapter to the mementos in my mental scrapbook.
Every year I set sail to summer with new ideas to work out and plans to organize in my my mind to set in motion come fall... this year I'm going to be taking into serious consideration who is with me and who is against me and the others who are walking the middle line because they don't have the courage or strength to pick either side... I'm letting go of the past but with that I'm letting go of people and ideas that don't bring peace and happiness to my life anymore... but mostly I'm letting go of other peoples opinions that at this point in my life are a dime a dozen. I learned something important since last summer... I don't need anyones validation to be happy and successful... Nicholas and I are on the crest of making some important changes and directions we want to take for the rest of our lives together...a lot of things and decisions were made for us late last year and it's taken up until now for these things to direct the compass inside me to have the courage to change directions.
The sea is and always will be part of my inspiration and one of the things that touches my soul to the core... because something I can touch with my toes spans the entire planet and brims with life and promise...the ocean as it withdraws from one beach at sunset and takes some of it's energy to distant shores around the world and leaves some of it with me and takes some of my molecules with it on it's long journey until it ultimately returns to me.
One of the other important lessons I've learned since last winter is that we need to become different people with every new chapter of our life...my plan for this year to find my place in the sun with the boys and girls of summer and where it can all lead for all of us from here to there and beyond.
Have fun... enjoy your time in the sun and sand or wherever the season takes you... See you in September!
Oh and one more thing... I got a pretty angry e-mail from a reader about my segment on Yearbooks a few weeks ago...I really want to clarify something... if you are lucky enough to be born someplace and feel like you belong there and are happy and want to spend the rest of your life there... you are really lucky because I was not one of those people and had to go out and find my place ( a couple of times).. in fact in many ways some of us have to keep looking because... well that's the way life works sometimes... Just an FYI... I have been to and spent a considerable amount of time in Lincoln Nebraska for one reason or another and it's a perfectly wonderful place.. it just was not a place that I felt really welcome or wanted to live and pursue a life and career (mostly because there are tornadoes and when I was visiting there was no I Magnin)... and finally maybe I was wrong about not wanting to go back to reunions... because I have spent a few hours perusing the Facebook pages of some reunions I did not attend... they did look fun and I did enjoy catching up with a few people even if it was on a page reading about it... so maybe after all these years perhaps we do have some common ground and have something to talk about... OK are we good?
