Embracing Summer

I'm wrapping up a trip to the land that time forgot. 

In a few hours the kids from the neighborhood will line up the bicycles they decorated for the fourth of July and ride them down the sidewalk that runs along the ocean front while the adults cheer and call out their names. 

The kids will then lead the way over to the fields where the holiday games are set up. They'll be split into different age groups of girls and boys and compete in sack races and balloon tosses and an obstacle course that ends with a belly flop onto a slip and slide.

Sometimes when you punch out and log off you find a whole different world.

For me it started last week when I went to pick up my push mower. It took a week longer than Bud had said and ended up costing me $45 and a lecture. The old guy who pointed to my mower said "I fixed the wheel. Somebody had put it on backwards." 

We both knew who that somebody was but I wasn't ready to own up to it. "Huh," I said, "I wonder how that happened." That was actually true. I knew that I had done it but was hoping the old guy would tell me what I'd done wrong so I didn't do it again. He just smiled and shook his head.

He probably took a credit card but it felt like it should be a cash transaction. If I'd had something to barter like deer meat or fresh vegetables that might have even been better. 

I gave the mower a push. The blades whirred effortlessly making a little clicking sound as they brushed the cutting surface. I couldn't wait to get it home and try it out. When I dipped the blades in my lawn and pushed the mower the grass streamed out of the back. I'm sure I'll wake from this ideal and go back to my gas mower, but for now it just feels like magic. It was the beginning of pushing the clock back thirty years or so.

That night we headed out to a farm. We are part of a group that takes turns picking up produce from a farmer whose farm we have all bought shares in. The shares support her through the winter and allows us to eat "close to the ground." I first learned that phrase from a talk that Mario Batali gave. He was talking about why food in Italy tends to taste so much better than it does here. 

It's his fault that my kids don't get strawberries in December even though the supermarket shelves are filled with them. But he's also the reason that we decided to join Barb's farm and get to enjoy the strawberries she picked this morning. They taste so much more like strawberries than any I've eaten in December. A lady once pointed out a display of berries to my youngest daughter at the store and said "Don't they look good."

At three years old she looked angelic as she looked up at the woman and said, "thank you, but my dad doesn't let us eat food out of season." I'm not really that rigid but it was nice that she got the general idea.

We got home from the farm and I went out to a wood burning stove that Kimmy-the-wonderwife bought me last year for Father's Day (although the sign on it said that it was from Anabelle, our dog). I crumpled up the sport section from the morning paper. The best thing that could happen from the Cleveland Indian's losing streak was that the stories about it could fuel my fire. I placed kindling on top of that and logs on top of that and lit the fire.

I went inside and stretched out four pieces of pizza dough into nine inch circles. While I went outside to tend to the fire Kim dressed each pizza differently. Basil from our garden went on one with pine nuts, olive oil, fresh mozzarella, and tomatoes (not quite in season). Another was topped with peppers I'd roasted on the fire as it heated the oven. Another with onions she'd sliced and thrown in foil and then on the flame. The last featured locally cured meat.

Once the floor of the oven reached 600 degrees we baked off the pizzas one at a time and sat outside at the picnic table and enjoyed an unusually cool and bug free summer night in Cleveland.

I hope you'll take some time this weekend to step away from your work and sit with someone whose company you enjoy and do something really simple. The something shouldn't involve electricity in any way. Sitting and watching the same show on television doesn't count. IMing or texting them isn't acceptable either. Take a walk with them or sit and share a beverage. Toast a marshmallow and share a Smore. 

Me, I'm finishing up this blog post here on my parents' back porch looking out across Naragansett Bay. Then I'm going to close my laptop and enjoy a cup of coffee with my mom and dad and wait for the bicycle parade and field day.

Spend some time off the clock and really recharge this weekend.

Comments

[Brad]

Nope I was alone for the 4th weekend. But this sure brought back childhood memories. Only for me it was near the end of summer a week or two before school started and it was called "Old Home's Day"