A Task, A Moment, and a Memory

You hit a certain age, and you count getting one thing done each day as enough. Taking a good long nap counts as a thing.

I come from a long line of women who were not good at relaxing. There were too many kids and cousins around, too many meals to make, boo-boos to soothe, messes to clean up, hems to shorten, or dishes to wash, for anyone — well, any female, anyway — to be idle. Sitting down with your feet up wasn’t an option.

But now that I’m a confirmed crone, letting my frizzy hair grow in unruly curls, salted with undisguised grey, I’m finding that letting go of the busy bee in me is much easier than it used to be.

Which isn’t to say I don’t keep busy: in the past week or two, my one thing a day has included mowing the lawn, cleaning the refrigerator, and doing several loads of laundry (with associated ironing!). But when my one task a day was done, it was a beer and a book on the deck. The next task can wait until tomorrow.

Then Angelic daughter reminded me that we owned an inflatable pool, one of those pandemic pools everyone ordered online for the summers of 2020-2022. I dug it out from the bottom of the deck box, inflated it, and filled it for Angelic Daughter, who delights in splashing around.

Of course, the pandemic pool sprang a leak after one day of use. No worries! Patch it with duct tape! Not so much? Ok, inflatables patch kit from the hardware store! Lasted less than an hour. No problem! New pool on sale, arrived the next day! And sprang a leak two days later. It came with two patches included, so I guess I should have considered myself forewarned. We’ll see if the patches work on Friday, after the storms roll through tonight and tomorrow. But if they don’t? Eh, so what? It was fun while it lasted. Who knows, maybe there’ll be one more pool on sale that I’ll remember not to over-inflate.

But while the pool(s) held water, I sat on the deck just reading and listening to Angelic Daughter splashing,”swimming,” and enjoying herself while cooling off.

Today was hot and humid, and it pushed me to my limit of back-to-back-days-in-excess-of-82 degrees-with-bad-air-quality-warnings that I can endure. But Monday was as perfect a summer day as you can get around here. The temperature didn’t exceed 78 degrees under an unhazy sky. After a splashy afternoon on the deck, I decided that instead of another trip to the grocery store to buy pints of Ben and Jerry’s which both of us would instantly devour in their entirety, we’d drive out to the classic ice cream franchise not too far away, and get an ice cream treat blended up with similar goodies – mint Oreos for her, Heath bars for me.

As usual, I took the less traveled road home, a two lane road I didn’t even know existed until I was halfway through high school, when one of my brother’s friends amazed me by driving me down it. It passes an apple orchard, an open lands preserve bounded by a new subdivision of bloated houses, and several McMansions set in what must be at least two acre lots. Not attractive houses, just big ones, but the size of the lots compensates for that. A few have beehives sitting far out in their lawns. One has a little pond and pier.

As we approached the turn on to that road, we passed a truck parked near the train tracks, with men in bright orange and yellow vests, obviously doing something that had to do with keeping the trains running safely and on time.

I spontaneously began to sing “I’ve been working on the railroad” and Angelic Daughter joined right in, keeping the song going through parts I had forgotten: “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh…” And somewhere between the “Dinah won’t you blow” and the “fee-fi-fiddly-i-oh, strummin’ on the old banjo” there was a brief moment of absolute summer perfection: a moment suffused with pure joy and contentment, where there was only the two of us, with our ice cream treats in the cup holders, singing a silly old song at the top of our lungs with the windows down, rolling down a deserted two-lane road, green fields on either side of us, and the harsh sunlight of a July afternoon fading to a gentle evening glow.

A perfect moment then, and a smiling memory now.

The forecast promises storms tonight that will drop the temperatures into the 60s tomorrow (bliss!), staying under 75 on Friday. My things for tomorrow and Friday will be mulch and transplanting ferns and hostas.

But I’ll be alert for more moments that make memories that keep me smiling through the hot, humid days that inevitably will return before the blessed release of autumn comes at last.

Wishing you perfect summer moments and smiling memories of your own, I remain,

your what-the-hell-it’s-summer-everyone-deserves-ice-cream-and-the-chance-to-sing-silly-songs-out-loud-while-driving-on-a-country-road,

Ridiculouswoman