Do you remember being a kid? I mean Really remember?

Wanting with all your heart to be older and independently on your own? But still arm wrestling with that childish lazy dependence on the adults surrounding and supporting you. And those summers.

Those lazy endless days of summer? Remember? Where the biggest decision you had to make all day was what time you wanted to roll out of bed and which kind of cereal you would eat for breakfast?

Searching desperately for a kid’s program to watch on television. Having to ‘get up’ to change the channels. Riding bicycles and mini-bikes until dark thirty. Swimming at the City pool or anywhere you were invited. Catching fireflies and keeping them in a mason jar. Gigging frogs in the creek.

And all your Mother wanted you to do was get up early, do your chores and for Pete’s sake read a book!

I miss those days. I miss the sweetness of the endless summers and all they entailed; before we grew up too fast and made commitments to summer sports and part-time jobs.

Just a lazy day in your pajamas.

You could probably use one of those days about now.

Good thing my G-maw knew me so well. Every summer I had the pleasure of spending a whole week with her. Just her and me. One day out of that week she would declare a stay-at-home-pajama-party. We began the day by sleeping in, which was followed by coffee with a LOT of cream and sugar. We would sit outside on the patio wearing our sear sucker house coats. Hers fit marvelously while mine drug the ground a bit even though we had pinned up the hem with large safety pins. She never seemed to mind if I got it a little bit dirty. There she would water her flowers and tell me stories about herself as a child on her Daddy’s farm. How her Mother rode a horse bareback with her long Indian braids trailing in the wind behind her; and how she, herself, could hitch up a horse and wagon all by herself before she was 11 years old! Her voice was kind and tender full of melancholy. The sun would shine, flowers bloomed and all was right with the world for a few mid-morning hours.

A fellow Cancerian, she understood my sensitive nature and the need to sometimes ‘just be’. Together we would marvel at the beauty of the flowers she had planted earlier in the Spring. And we would plot and plan a vacation for later in the summer.

A shopping day was included in our week together where we would drive to Dallas and shop the downtown area. Neiman’s was one of many stops that included lunch at a counter grill inside the Motts store complete with a Coke float! She would buy me pretty dresses for school, a pair of new shoes and a few school supplies.

Tomorrow is Back to School for teachers. I have exactly one week to wrap up my lesson plans and get my room ready for the anxious young minds searching for careers in Health Care…

Exhale.

My endless summer is coming to a sweet end. It’s been full of lazy pajama days drinking coffee on the back porch with family and friends…and training…and writing…and a summer vacation swimming in the beautiful Caribbean Sea, soaking up those last rays and drinking tequila with Jose’ on our second little Isela by the sea.

So Salute Mexico. Salute summer. I’ll see you again soon.

And that book I was supposed to read? Just finished it Mawdine.

Endlessly summerly yours,

Nadine Bodine

Your VERY Best friend in the whole wide world 🌎☮️❤️🚋