hidden seasons

I rolled over and looked toward the window. Early sunlight filtered through my room, and I could already feel the warmth rushing over my face. I was nearly overcome by a swell of joy and excitement. It was going to be another hot and sunny day! That meant I could walk to the library after breakfast, crossing that gray-weathered little wooden bridge over the railroad tracks. It meant we would be going swimming after lunch – a long afternoon of underwater handstands and cannonballs, chlorine and Coppertone smells. It meant cool little cut-up sandwiches for dinner, because it was too hot to cook in the kitchen. And it meant a whole night of four-square and swing races and kick the can, hiding behind big trees and scratching mosquito bites while fireflies flickered contentedly. It was summer, and the world was wonderful. I was eight years old.

And through countless summers ever since, I’ve wondered, where did that secret place go? A place of simple gratitude and unrestrained joy in a season of popsicles and picket fences, lemonade and lawn games. On the way home from work once, on a whim, I rolled down the car windows and turned off the radio. Sure enough, it momentarily rushed back to meet me. The buzz of fat bumblebees and cicadas. The whistled melody of robins and whippoorwills. Dandelion fluff dancing on my outstretched fingers. And the light, most of all the light: Full of dappled hope and happiness, hidden promises discarded and forgotten over time. I realized the place hadn’t changed, the season hadn’t changed. But I had; and in that breath I would have given anything to kick off my shoes and cross that crooked little bridge to the long-ago place I remembered.

Our lives today are so full of incredible advances – mobile phones and GPS, tracking chips and radar. But the place we really need to get back to resides in our minds and our hearts. The map was scribbled out in faded crayon and folded up in our back pockets, and our grown-up selves misplaced it long ago. Somehow, the path we once tended so carefully has become choked and overgrown with weeds of discouragement and worries that are often much too real.

Yet on some nights when sleep is a struggle, my mind still tiptoes back to a distant, lazy summer afternoon filled with swingsets and sandboxes, somersaults and giggled secrets. We were bronzed and barefoot. Homework-free until fall. The next school term light-years away. And as we ambled home to dinner, our shadows stretched so long and full before us that they nearly touched the place where the clovered meadow met the sky.