Isn’t it funny how summer has a habit of bringing home, the reality of life’s impermanence?
The uncanny way that days …melt into weeks, then into years, and at a rate that scarcely crosses our sentimental mind, at any other time of year! (Apart from maybe at Christmas!)
From this regard, summer is a recipe for ‘presence panic’ if ever there was one. This malaise of blink-n-you’ll-miss, born out of the pressure to cherish every moment, is something that parents, especially, will relate to.
As summer becomes a Generation Game of trying to consign EVERY. SINGLE. MOMENT to memory, the conveyor just keeps revolving with ever-more ice cream smiles, sticky hand holds and cuddly toys than our minds (and hearts) can possibly take.
As for the Big Prize incentive, once the carousel stops and school resumes!?
Well, it’s not a new car, or some garden furniture…or even a microwave oven, but what it is, is the vague promise of a return ticket to these precious summer days, in the winters to come.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps.
After all, the ‘funny tricks of time’ have an ironically unamusing habit of chip-chipping away at the vessel of ‘frozen pictures’, no matter how well we try to water-tight it with mindfulness and gratitude.
Thankfully, however, the underlying ESSENCE of these summer memories, seems not quite so fragile as the details. So much so, that long after the choc-chip stickiness has been wet-wiped away, and the handbags have been emptied of their cuddly companions, the sweetness of just knowing it all happened … can take us back still!