These are the days
Posted on | July 3, 2007 |
We ate dinner outdoors, breaded chicken, fresh snap peas, homemade French fries; and then walked up the road to the neighbor’s pond, the three of us and a red wagon. Sitting out on the slender plank dock, frogs began to call back and forth across the still water. Above us, swallows swooped low for insects.
We kept Bean up late, with a cup of frothed milk and a pillow in his wagon, because a neighbor puts on a grand firework display every year, and tonight was the night! As good, or better than the ones in town. Dozens upon dozens of sparkling, fill-the-whole-sky-with-brilliance, fireworks. Sipping cold beer. Fresh chocolate chip cookies. Plenty of dogs. Bean curled in my lap, his wide grin lit again and again by each new display.
Have I mentioned we have lovely neighbors? We really do. DH and I keep feeling like we walked into a storybookâat the end of our long dirt road. I am beyond grateful that we found this place: this land, these people. Last Friday we went to another neighborhood shindig: a strawberry festival. Everyone brought deserts featuring local strawberries. The counter top was a mosaic of berries and cream and cake. Bean was the only kid in a forest of adults and everyone indulged him: pouring more lemonade, adding extra chocolate dipped strawberries to his plate, and cooing when he flashed them a smile and bated his lovely eyelashes.
He’s at such a cool age right now: he says thank you and please without prompting (mostly,) and can tag along to such gatherings without certain disaster ensuing. Tonight he was a love. Wide-eyed and eager, he totally dug the whole firework thing. And then rode home watching stars and fireflies, and crawled willingly into bed. These are the days I want to remember when I’m eighty.
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13 Responses to “These are the days”
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July 4th, 2007 @ 1:38 am
Ahhh, right there with you lovely. I have one this age, and yes this is such a cool age- simply amazing.
July 4th, 2007 @ 7:55 am
What a lovely life you’ve created for yourselves. Happy 4th, Christina. Hope you’re enjoying your summer break.
July 4th, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
That sounds heavenly!
July 4th, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
That sounds heavenly!
July 4th, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
It sounds like you’ve found a wonderful community.
July 5th, 2007 @ 2:01 am
And yes, I hope you will remember many years later. I’m a gran now and I focus often on the childhood times of my sons, their delight in ordinary things, their good manners with adults, their ease with all kinds of people when we lived in bamboo huts beside the sea in Fiji and later amidst the wheatfields of an Australian town through their Primary school years.
w.
July 5th, 2007 @ 6:33 am
ahhhhhhh….
i love this…
i feel relaxed
just having read it.
July 5th, 2007 @ 8:07 am
You have such a wonderful way with words.. I could almost see those fireworks. It is winter down here in Tassie, and a warm night and strawberries sounds like storybook fare. Enjoy!
July 5th, 2007 @ 10:03 am
love this post… a glimpse of everyday life, real love bursting between the lines…
July 5th, 2007 @ 10:07 am
I love that Bean wasn’t scared of the fireworks - I remember my brother around that age, and he had a MELTDOWN on the 4th of July. We felt so bad, and there was no where to get away! (We were in Atlanta, my mom was running the Peachtree Race thingy.) How good to have good neighbors - almost a lost art. And of course they doted on Bean - how could they not?
July 5th, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
Your collage said it all ~ before even having read the lines telling this tale of a wonderful night, in real life.
July 6th, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
Summer, so full of wonder. And eating outdoors–I love it, where we eat together so often.
July 9th, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
voila! perfection! i read this and i want so much to find that place where everything fits together, the end of the road, home. not that life isn’t wonderful in my neck of the woods because my days and heart are full right now, but i keep wanting to find a place-neighborhood-road-house that says to me “this is it.” but maybe i am getting ahead of myself, maybe that sense of place comes in little scoops and moments along the way, or maybe that comes later and this displaced sense of wanderlust is perfect for right now. can you believe we are already looking at another move - maybe to OR this time - it’s only been a year. what i really wanted to say though is thank you for sharing this beautiful life of yours.