Just wrap me up, baby.
There is not much of anything better to me than a walk outside on a summer night. With everyone in the neighborhood already tucked inside, the streets are quiet and random street lights flicker on and off. There’s a luscious breeze every once in a while that seems to wrap me up in these big, safe arms and whisper promises of sunshine and time at the pool this weekend. And the smell of the air. Oh man. Remnants of grilled food, fragrances of spilling petunias, and the hint of freshly mowed grass creates the best potpourri imaginable.
I just love it.
I know that our days have started becoming shorter again and the start of a new school year for our boy is just around the corner. Unbelievable. I never thought that I could miss summer as it descended into fall more than I did when I was a kid. While the start of school was forever exciting, I always missed lazing about in the cool grass, watching grasshoppers fly across the lawn, and doing my best to populate every field and yard in a mile radius with dandelions because it was my lips pursed together, blowing those fluffy seeds as softly as I could to watch them float around like suspended clouds.
But I think I miss my summers even more now. There’s more to miss. Watering the plants with my boys, watching their increasing bravery at the pool, listening to how their giggles and full on hee-haw laughter sometimes spills but mostly rolls ferociously across whatever span of space is between us. Watching my stupid funny cat buddy up to another cat to prowl the neighborhood together. Looking at my boys’ backs the morning after jumping too late on the trampoline and wondering, “Are those mosquito bites or do they have chicken pox?” Soon I’ll be thinking, “Oh crap, did Holden remember to go through all of his homework?!” as we try to wake up over plates of steaming scrambled eggs in the mornings and I ponder my most recent failure as a parent before my morning coffee kicks in.
Until then, however, I get my daily dose of this.
And this handsome chunk of monkey.
I love my frogman.
Now. You should go take a walk. And probably take some bug spray, because you’ll want to stay out there a little longer to catch some fireflies.
And by the way? We don’t really have those in Colorado. At least not where we are. So catch some for me?
