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Summer

“Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky.
I join my hands in thanks for the many wonders of life;
For having twenty-four brand new hours.
The sun is rising on the forest and so is my awareness...”
Thich Nhat Hanh

The trees in Birmingham are fully leafed out, and even though our nights are still cool, Spring is moving rapidly into summer. Thich Nhat Hahn's poem reminds me of childhood, and of the differences between the way we spent summer and the way children do now. In the 1950's and 60's, summer stretched out before us like a green oasis separating us from the confinements of school, winter and adult expectations. We spent long days in the woods damming up creeks, catching crawdads, getting soaked and muddy, and not going inside until hunger drove us. In the evenings, we told made-up ghost stories. We filled canning jars full of fireflies, punched holes in the top so they could breathe, and took them inside to watch their neon lights until we fell asleep. In the morning, we released them back into the wild so that we could catch them again.

Once a week, my sister and I walked to the library and came home with an entire grocery bag full of books. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were like next door neighbors. Dogs lived outside and nobody worried that they would run away and not come back. In those days, God was a simple concept—an ever-present, ever-loving, kind, generous, wise old man, who could make all things right if we just asked him. We didn't debate who was loved and accepted by God, because we were as ignorant of other religions as Adam and Eve in the garden.

We slept with the windows open because there was no air conditioning, and listened to the songs of peepers, cicadas, and crickets. My father's garden provided almost everything we ate for the entire year—corn, tomatoes, yellow squash, green beans, onions, peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes. There was a clear division of labor. My dad planted and tended the garden and the women of the household put it up in jars.

We swam in the lake with no lifeguard, in shorts and t-shirts, and stayed in the water until our skin shriveled and our lips turned blue. We played softball without uniforms, in Keds and everyday clothes, and nobody gave us a trophy at the end. We played made-up games with cousins and neighborhood kids, with no supervision; no adult called to us, “stay where I can see you.” Somehow, we survived and grew up with a strong sense of independence and a few scars to prove it. We learned how to work as a team, and how to take care of a problem ourselves. Summers were blissful, free, self-organized expeditions of discovery, of trial and error, of learning by doing.

I hope that somewhere children still have the freedom to learn in this way.

In the Spirit,
Jane