What is it about the heightened senses of summer that make small moments feel profound? As summer progresses from July to August, there is a mounting momentum that I suddenly realize has been swelling since the first blooms in April. The robust branch of every overhanging tree. The sonorous chorus of cicadas echoing into a summer night that so defines the very reason to sleep with the window open. The way the heat from the afternoon blankets the earth into evening and that one little life saving cool breeze that breaths life into the sheer curtains that frame the open window. The feeling of skin because there are more summer dresses and shorts and tangled bare calves as we fall asleep. Ice cream becomes as essential as water, usually consumed just after the setting of a hot sun. Remember walking down Oakton, the four of us, for ice cream that one summer night? Or the three of us sitting on a park bench at Gilson Park reading Kundera after work? Exactly.
The ascendancy of summer is a sensory playground and I am learning to love the tension that it creates. The building crescendo is similar to one of those sneaky thriller movies where you notice three quarters into viewing that you are white knuckled and your chest is pounding but you are uncertain how and when that happened? Cue floor drums. Or the soundtrack to House of Cards. Such small moments become epic memories with the backdrop of summer. And so we are finishing up with beach volleyball on a Monday night at sunset. Our ankles are dotted with pecks from the mouths of little gnats and I am wearing shorts for the first time this year and a sleeping babe who is tucked against my chest. In the darkening night, Ben and I pick up some frosty's at the Wendy's drive through. On our way home, we debate if there indeed is anything natural about a frosty. And this is our moment- a few minutes in the car on a beautiful night with beach-y-ness in our hair and on our skin- that we have a simple perfect moment together.
