A Summer of Simple
Exhibit A: a favourite photo from last summer. But, contrary to the story told by this golden hour snapshot, it was a Summer of Survival.
I watched your Hot Girl summer from the pit of my Barely Getting By summer and The Opposite Of Everything I Dreamt Of summer. The Summer of Survival seeped into Autumn and Winter (emphasis on the survival and less on the summer), like an unwanted guest with its loud presence and non-existent table manners.
Our imposing guest kept us on our praying knees, and finally, something began to lift and change in the Spring — a breakthrough just begging to be turned into a metaphor about new life.
I hesitate to speak too soon, but I think we’re out the other side, or at least closer than we’ve ever been. We’re still picking up some of the pieces, but I think we always will be. Isn’t that what we’re all doing, anyway? Aren’t we all just constantly picking up the pieces of this life and offering them to Jesus with open hands? Here you go Lord, here’s some more absolute carnage I can’t figure out by myself. Care to hold it for me?
Oh, and our youngest likes to sleep these days, which changes just about everything.
I’m alone and waiting for my turn at the self service checkouts in Tesco, when I catch the conversation behind me. By catch I mean, I reposition my body to listen better at the mention of the words Lake Garda. The dream.
“No, we’ve never been before either but we thought we’d just go for it, you know, after everything the last couple of years.”
“You’re just right, love. Why not? Sure, we booked Majorca for Easter but Sam’s passport didn’t come, so we’re going in July instead.”
“Yes, I heard that from your mummy. The passport waiting times are awful. It’s a disgrace. I hope you get away. The kids deserve it after everything they’ve been through.”
Dissatisfied with the lack of details about Lake Garda, I open my Instagram app and begin scrolling through everyone’s bank holiday posts. Someone I don’t know is renting an airbnb in Donegal. Oh, a friend from university is in London. Of course, an influencer is on her way to Disneyland with her children. Their precious minnie mouse ears make me want to cry. Someone from my Mums and Tots group bought a new water slide. An online friend is taking a day trip to Dublin Zoo. I love Dublin Zoo. It’s already the school holidays for some American friends, and they’re building a pool the size of my house to cope with their sweaty climate.
I close the app.
I stare at the dog food on the shelves beside our queue. Has dog food always been this expensive?
It’s my turn to pay next. I open our online banking app to check we have enough money for my salt and vinegar crisps and nappies.
We do. But we don’t have enough money for dog food or a water slide.
I’ve been tempted to overcompensate for the Summer of Survival. My goal-obsessed heart wants to make bucket-lists upon bucket-lists with firework-worthy day trips and Pinterest-esque plans. The Summer of Spectacular, I want to declare it. Or if I decide to stop nauseating us all with alliteration, the summer of memories and adventure and spontaneous yeses and booking flights and making dreams come true and exuding massive yolo energy.
But as June disappeared before my eyes and the Summer anxiety ramped up, a whisper in my heart has been nudging me in a different direction. The Summer of Simple.
I want more yes, you can help mum in the kitchen and less get in the car, we need to go. More yes, I’m watching and less sorry, show me later. More okay, one more time and less I need to go do something.
More backyard chalk, less extra curriculars. More family ice-creams, less trendy day trips. More buckets and spades, less summer must-haves (water slide I’m looking at you). More boredom, less entertainment. More living-room dancing, less don’t-miss-it events. More living, less pressure to make memories. More bird watching (Reuben’s choice), less guilt because we don’t have the money to book the aforementioned flights.
More of the same walks and same parks, with different people and different conversations. And different silences, even.
Alas, we still made a bucket list because I am who I am and I won’t apologise for that. But it’s filled with all of our usual ‘simples’, plus a couple of biggies to get extra excited about (one boy is particularly excited to sleep in the garden with daddy and one daddy is particularly excited to go to Nandos).
Someday we might have the Summer of Spectacular, and someday the Summer Bucket list might include the big yeses and yolo adventures. In fact, I know it will.
But for now, you will find us at the skate park and eating outside and building lego and baking cakes and visiting daddy’s work and having movie nights and playing with water and concocting smoothies and minecrafting the minecraft thingies and blowing bubbles and tucking into our library hauls.
And my biggie of choice: toasting marshmallows.
On the inside-my-head bucket list that no one knows about, I have noted one (simple) thing: be a watcher.
I want to see the Summer of Simple with my eyes up and out of my phone, out of my to-do list and unanswered emails. And because my fickle heart can’t help but compare, it will be a Summer of Signing Out (last S, I promise). I’m aware this looks different for everyone, and I’m not exactly sure how it will look for me. But usually it means less social media and more silence (dammit, sorry). More writing in a real life notebook (where this was originally written!!), and less iphone notes.
More simple, less spectacular. (And maybe a teeny weeny bit of survival because, life.)