Happy 2nd Birthday, Olivia Rose Errera!!!

Olivia shortly after birth

May 2006

Today is also Summer Solstice (although that wasn’t the case the day my fabulous niece was born; Solstice fell on June 20th that year). I’ve got a little Celtic devotional that offers a greeting to the Summer Solstice:

Glory of the Day-Star, hail!
Lifter of the Light, Burnisher of the Sky.
Gifts of love to earth are bringing,
Summer’s shimmer, dew’s delight.
Dancing be the heart within us,
Open be our souls to bliss,
Courage vanquish every shadow,
Greet midsummer with a kiss.

The authors then suggest some spirit-enriching activities for the summer months, none of which I’ll do, because I’m going to spend the season buried under a mountain of work. I must confess, summer is my least favorite season, because I really mind the heat and humidity. My perfect summer weather would be three months of temperatures in the high 70s, with an eye-wateringly blue sky, no humidity, and a lovely little breeze. But in this area? I ain’t gonna get it. It’s hot, it’s humid, the sky gets bleached out by rags of haze, and the calendar is peppered with Code Red days (when the heat and pollution make it inadvisable to wander outside if you’re young, elderly, or have breathing problems). Summer can be a nasty, clammy, stagnant glimpse of what it might be like to be slowly buried alive.

However, it does carry its perks. Although I eat ice cream all year round, it never packs quite the same wallop of magic as it does on a sluggish summer day. Other perks of summer? How the sky looks before a thunderstorm. Gardens. Swimming in the ocean. Ice cream at the Jigger Shop. The glorious shock of walking into an air-conditioned building on a hot day. Having a few hours of daylight left after I leave work. Those splendid days where—after a long stretch of humid, hazy, disgustingly hot days—I wake up and the sky is bright blue and there is a perfect breeze and the sun is warm but not blazing, and I can throw open all the windows and I just want to roll around in the grass. Being barefoot outside. Sleeping naked. Light, airy clothes. Wearing sandals and going to work with bare legs. Dining al fresco (when it’s not too hot!). Fireflies. Heat lightning. Shimmering roads. Explosive greenness. Warm, soaking rains. Three federal holidays. Skinnydipping (I’ve only ever done it 2-3 times, but it was always during the summer). Bare feet swishing in a lake. Driving with the windows down.

Last night I picked up Heather and her kids at BWI, after their week in Washington State. I realized that exactly one year had passed since I was the one arriving at BWI, my hair still matted with silica from a pre-flight jaunt to Blue Lagoon. Maybe I should start a tradition of being at BWI on June 20th?


song heard most recently before posting: To Let Myself Go—Ane Brun