Summertime Diaries

Middle of May: nostalgic heat, mini-vans, debut novels

Last Friday, the FedEx man (or “may-man!” as Kit calls anyone with a truck and a box on their hip) dropped off a short, slender package on our porch, containing Kit’s very first set of golf clubs, an old set Price found off of eBay with red grips, so short they made us laugh. Price was thrilled when he got home from work, happy with the set, happy with Kit’s interest, happy with the thought of playing with his babies, and so he booked us a tee time for the next morning, for us to go play after our tradition of Saturday donuts. For the Masters, he always finds us all a piece of merchandise (also off of eBay), and this year, Kit got a collared, quarter-zip golf shirt with the Masters logo on the breast. And so after breakfast, she put on her golf clothes, her Crocs, brushed her hair and pulled it back with a clip, and then we loaded up the car with their clubs, sunglasses, a lunchbox of snacks, and a bottle of milk for Henry (also in a collared shirt), and headed to the course. We made it all nine holes, me and Hen behind the wheel while Kit walked with Price, a tub of crackers in the crook of her elbow, her cheeks pink. She lost interest in the game after three or so putts, but the memory exists, the interest exists, and that’s all that matters in our pursuit of producing tiny one-day professional golfers. We watched the geese, standing from afar and told her they were mean, as to deter her desire to inch closer. We let her play every green, most every time just to end up dropping the ball in the hole by hand. She came home and ate off of both of our Subway sandwiches, famished, and then she slept as though it were nighttime, the result of a warm day and two tiny legs, trying to keep up with her dad and the golf ball.

This week, I had the babies and our stroller in the mini-van, sunscreen-ed, ice water-ed, and on the way to our walk by 9:45, nearly an entire hour earlier than the routine we’ve kept up since August. I didn’t start walking this route in this way (to exercise rather than just to have something to do) until about a month or so after Henry was born, mid-August. We had been walking circles around our neighborhood after every meal before him, an assignment to curb the gestational diabetes I’d been plagued with, all summer. Slow, short treks in the wagon, the weight of one baby and one dog. But now, as the mornings creep towards 90 degrees, the sky cleared of the clouds of springtime, I’m aware we need to shift our schedule around, if I’m going to keep this up. I’m going to have to venture out into the dreadfully messy shed, not fully unpacked, looking for the pink stroller fans I took to Sunday church last summer, fanning my severely pregnant self in the pew while everyone stood and sang. I’m going to have to change them into walking clothes, instead of leaving them in their pajamas until naptime. I’m going to have to clean breakfast up quickly, saving the pitter-pattering for when we get home.

We’ve made friends with a couple who live a block or so over, a retired English professor and his wife. They walk the same route every morning, hand in hand and a book in the other, and on most days, we stop and talk. He had been shocked to learn I studied English in his department, but what I didn’t tell him was that I was far too scared to take his courses, and I’d avoided him the entire time. Regardless, here we are now, friends. They told me yesterday they had bad news, that they were moving their walks to seven in the morning. And really, I should be doing the same.

But there’s something about the sun hot on my shoulders, the red in my cheeks, on my forehead, tanned hands. It’s a higher sense of accomplishment, to walk in the heat, to walk despite the heat. It feels gratifying to get to the end, to need water desperately, to feel the warmth of my blood, to sprint the hill right before I finish, squinting as I chase the sun.

Then I open all the doors of my mini-van from my key fob, this magical car you’ll have to pry from my cold hands as long as children live in my house. It is the season of warm leather seats, nice on your skin until they’re not. At the beginning of the week, I opened Henry’s door, bouncing him on my hip, and I was hit with the smell of being 12 years old again, spending what felt like entire summers in the heart of Texas, bumping around the backseat of my auntie’s Honda Chrysler. I wonder what it is they put in mini-vans, for them all to smell that way?

I feel like I have learned to romanticize the heat, the swelling humidity of living in the depths of Arkansas, from writing about it. My novel revolves around the summertime of a childhood spent in Mississippi, and I’ve found syrupy lake water and warm skin and burning blue skies to be beautiful things to describe. Still, though, as Price and I pushed the babies in their red wagon, all three of them squished in now, down the street after dinner, I told him I still dream of summers Rhode Island, where the heat is dry and half the severity. I’ve written about it here, this ache for a place we’ve only spent a little more than two weeks within, but it is what it is. Both times we went only engrained the feeling of being seaside, of breathing sandy air deep into my soul, as if I’d spent great portions of my life on the edge of the country and not deep within.

I told Price I’ve come to terms with the reality of summers in New England and how they could fit into our lives. I told him just give me two weeks, two weeks is all, that I’d find a cottage with a grassy yard and a little path to the ocean, and we could stop at the grocery shop on our way in, just existing there for the last little bit of summer, before the babies go back to school. I told him I read a book once about children returning to the house their parents rented every summer, up somewhere on the ocean. About how they cherished that house, despite realizing how decrepit it was later on, in their adulthood. Their memories were rose colored, and that was fine, because it was childhood, and it was good. I have something to work towards now, two weeks in Rhode Island someday, for the sake of Kit and Henry’s childhood, for the sake of my life.

CONSUMING

This week, I read a book and a half, both pre-ordered from debut authors I’ve stumbled upon on Instagram. The first, Phoebe Thompson’s Girls Our Age, wasn’t my cup of tea, per say. But the second, the one I’m still a little over 100 pages out from being done with, is one I’m enjoying a little more. Shannon Garvey’s June Baby, a novel from Jenna Bush Hager’s publishing imprint, is a story of a woman in her late twenties who spent the last decade of her life working blue collar jobs on Block Island, living a life riddled with tragedy and heartbreak. The story has been marketed as a beach read, and really, I would argue it’s far from one, except for the setting alone. The author does a marvelous job describing her character and her surroundings. The story itself, however, is one of heartbreak and regret and, quite frankly, hopelessness. So we will see where it goes. I loved getting to participate in the excitement of a stranger’s publication day, though, both books arriving on my doorstep the very day they came out. I watched Shannon’s interview on the fourth hour of Today, and then that night, I started it. They were just two girls who dreamed of writing a book, and here I was, reading them!

This week, I also discovered a song I’ve now listened to a plethora of times: Kenny Loggins’ “Celebrate Me Home,” as first heard on a Lizzy McAlpine playlist, her cover being just as beautiful. If you haven’t listened, you should. And if you haven’t listened to the Ultimate Disney Movie Songs Playlist, you should find that, too, on recommendation of Kit and Henry. We’ve been listening to this for hours each day, on our miniature Bose speaker that primarily lives in our kitchen, but now goes room to room with us. I’ve been so immensely surprised at how Kit can announce what song is playing, just after the first two or three chords, and for movies she’s never even seen. Price just recently added a few songs from Sound of Music, and within seconds of Julie Andrews’ voice, Kit started shouting “Poppins! Poppins!” (I promise I will not be one of those parents that gloat on Facebook, but…she’s brilliant? Right?)

And then last on our content plate, despite my limiting of screen time to one movie a weekend, the spare flat screen TV is back in the front room in honor of the PGA Championship. My coffee table books and gold lamp and my potted plant has been moved and replaced with a screen wider than the dresser it sits upon, but for the majors, I’ll allow it. I’m, of course, pulling for Scottie. But if not, I’m hoping Justin Rose makes a run for it.

PONDERING

The absorbent cost of groceries, how the dollars are snuck in, tacked on the top of numbers that seem miniscule, but all added up, equal hundreds of dollars. How a box of diapers costs $45 at Walmart, and there’s nothing to do but swallow and insert my debit card. My parents have a Sam’s Club membership, and I think I’m going to have to just slate a morning to drive out of town every two weeks or so, the expedition worth the money saved. How in the world I got Henry to sleep in past eight for two mornings in a row, and why in the world I haven’t accomplished it since. My Mother’s Day stepping stones, how the stones sank deep inside the concrete as it dried, how it dried white and ugly. Then Price told me that when we were patting the stones on the sidewalk out front, hitting them as to rid the stone of bubbles, we must have woken the worms in the ground, for the next day, he saw ten or so where we had been sitting. Why my beloved TruFru isn’t tasting as wonderful as they did when I first discovered them, back in March, my treat that kept me going as we worked into the night at the house. I’d have a bowl of them while Price gave Henry his midnight bottle, around two a.m. and for a while, I’d think, I’ve never had anything as good as these in my life. I’m scared the novelty has worn off.

WRITING

I wrote the first 30,000 or so words of my book three summers ago, before I was pregnant with Kit. I wrote it in the afternoons in my office at the inn (some of you may remember that far back), after I’d cleaned the rooms and vacuumed the hallways and started the laundry in the mornings. That summer, it rained nearly every day, rolling thunderstorms with white sheets of water against the old windows of my office, and I’d sit and watch the lightning and the trees in the wind and write this story that was only just really forming into one worthy of being told. I printed the pages out and took them home to Price, reading them out loud while we sat on the back patio. Then I’d give them to my mom, thinking they were really worth writing home over.

But now, after I’ve finished the book in its entirety, I’ve returned to pick apart those pages, and I literally keep laughing at myself and my conviction that these had been good at some point. I’m sick I ever let them see the light of day, and so, so incredibly grateful I’m editing them now, before handing them over to that retired English professor from my walks, who so graciously agreed to edit them. I told my mom yesterday that I pray I won’t feel the way I feel now about those first few chapters in a few years, about the entire book. She said that no, of course I wouldn’t, but she’s my mother. So I suppose only time will tell!