summertime

"Start making granola and when I get back we can watch a Mad Men," my husband says as he closed the kitchen door just now.

So I should be making granola instead of typing here, but there's something so solidly summer in what he said. Not the request really, but what I know is woven within. The granola (which is the perfect recipe) will be sprinkled over some homemade Greek yogurt in the morning (I can't quite get the recipe right, it always seems too something--too grainy, thick, thin...), we'll pick blueberries from our garden to add to our breakfast. It'll be the first day of July. JULY! and a Tuesday at that and he's not in school and we'll take our time. We'll all be together, and up earlier than we'd like because our youngest just can't seem to sleep past 6 am.

And because there is no school there's no grading (glory and glory amen and amen) and we can watch TV and sit on the couch and luxuriate in the nothing to do (though housework looms and waits for no one I tell you, those tyrants Laundry and Dishes). I need a sip of this last-day-of-June elixir in November and again in February when I'm widowed to schoolwork, grading, and routine.

I hope this finds you in the same situation: the deepest, most golden most lazy part of  summertime. July is fully fatly ahead of us: let's drink deep and soak and laugh and play. Make granola and watch TV or fireflies or a child sleeping. Feel the sun stretched tight on your cheeks and shoulders and your hair softened from lake water or crackling from the sea.

And lest you think I'm living in some sort of idyllic rapturous splendor, my husband is in the backyard with a Mason jar full of gasoline lighting a yellow jacket nest on fire.

Oh, and hey Jillian: you won a copy of Trouve--hooray! I'll give it to you next time I see you. Thanks everyone for supporting my writing and such a lovely magazine.