Breathing in Summer...

A year ago today I was sitting on a cliff trying to decide if going over would be easier than standing my ground. A year ago, I was waiting to exhale. My son was about to get married, my house was up for sale, my husband wanted out, and I had to find a place to live. Other than that...not much was going on.

Twelve months later, so many questions have been answered (and yet, so many more lingering in my mind.) But, I have been able to back off from the cliff and settle in a grass covered meadow where I plan to breath in every wisp of summer! As stress free as life will allow. And since this weekend is the unofficial start of summer, I will start NOW!

"Summertime is always the best of what might be." Charles Bowden

Join me?

• I have always been a women of autumn and in the past, I would wish summer away while waiting for the leaves to change...not anymore. A promise to myself - "live each day".
• I will not turn the air conditioning on while the temperatures are still in the 70's! I will open the windows and allow the summer breeze through! (Okay, I will hold to this as long as there is no humidity. Thick air and I are not friends!)
• I will cover the dining room table with newspapers, steam a pot of Jersey Blue Claws, throw in some white corn from Hunters Market, smother with Old Bay, ice down some beer and invite my sons and the girls over to pick, chew and talk! Summer family gatherings are so much more casual than the big winter holidays. No expectations or traditions to withhold...just have some fun!

Tiny lights piercing holes through the dark sky...hope!

"Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and gray. Look out on a summer's day, with eyes that know the darkness in my soul" Don McLean

• I will find the solitude that only a star-filled, soft summer night offers. Preferably while lying on a sandy beach. 
• ...And if I'm very lucky, fireworks will be shooting from a dark barge anchored off shore.
• I  will stop what ever I am doing to listen to the laughter of young children running through a sprinkler.
• I will eat the reddest, sweetest watermelon I can find ( and lots of it since I just read that it is a natural diuretic!) I will savor the juices of a fresh peach, and stain my fingers red eating cherries from a bowl.
• And while we are on the subject, I will buy all my produce from a roadside stand, from a local farmer, from the fields of New Jersey. I can only do this a few months of the year and I'm not going to waste   it on Chilean fruit.

There is no substitute!!! 

Unlike last year at this time, my vision is clear. Work when I have to, enjoy life when I'm off. Without a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat, the long days of summer will be so much more enjoyable. I may (and this is just a "maybe") even examine the possibilities of opening my heart once again. And with a nod to my friends Jessica Gordon Ryan and Shelley C. Holmes, I will remember that... 

"Some of the best memories are made in flip flops!" Kellie Elmore

Photos by ImageGoggle