That Summer Feeling

On Scheduling the Opening, Not the Activity

Yesterday I wandered into a bookstore and passed a display of summer reading. Instantly, I was ten years old again.

I remembered the library’s summer reading program, the stack of books beside my bed, and those long afternoons with nowhere I had to be. Back then, summer seemed to stretch out endlessly before me. I woke up each morning wondering what adventures the day might hold.

Standing there among the brightly colored paperbacks, I realized it wasn’t the books I was remembering. It was the feeling of spaciousness. The feeling that there was enough time, enough daylight, enough room in the day for wandering outside, reading, drawing, making up stories, daydreaming, and discovery.

As I left the store, I found myself thinking about this summer in a different light.

How might I embrace summer more fully?

The question stayed with me.

This morning, while writing my morning pages, it returned in a different form:

What are the gifts only summer can give?

I paused and stared out the window, then started making a list: swimming in a warm lake, walking barefoot in the grass, watermelon, hammock reading, and sun tea. Long hikes and lingering evenings when the light refuses to leave. One memory led to another until I found myself smiling.

What struck me was how seasonal these pleasures are. Eating a perfectly ripe peach over the kitchen sink. A warm tomato fresh from the garden. Even the quality of evening light. These gifts arrive for a brief visit and then disappear again until next year.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about living close to nature and the seasons, not just the seasons outside my window, but the seasons of a life.

I think I may be in the summer of my life, not just my calendar.

Something is ripening and producing fruit.

The writing of the memoir is nearly complete. For years, it has been my faithful companion and my taskmaster both. It has asked for early mornings and late nights, memories I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit, and the courage to put private things into sentences.

Now, for the first time, it feels done. Done enough, anyway. Complete in the way a season is complete. When I placed it in a trusted reader’s hands, I felt something I didn’t expect. Not relief exactly, but a lightness and an ease I hadn’t felt in a long time. As though I had been carrying something for so long I’d forgotten I was carrying it. As though the fruit of all those years of effort is not accomplishment alone, but the freedom to stop striving quite so hard.

Recently, I let the people closest to me know that I would no longer be responding to texts before noon. If someone truly needed me, of course they could call. But the steady stream of funny memes, quick questions, and non-urgent chit-chat could wait.

At first it felt almost indulgent.

Then it felt necessary.

I hadn’t realized how much the constant ping of incoming texts was fragmenting my attention. Every message pulled me away from my writing, my thoughts, my prayers, and my morning rhythm. Before I had even settled into my own day, I was responding to everyone else’s.

My mornings became quieter, less fragmented, and more my own.

Spaciousness.

Just this morning, a phrase arrived that I can’t seem to shake:

Don’t schedule the activity. Schedule the opening.

The more I sit with it, the wiser it feels. Protect a morning. Leave room in the day. Then let life and inspiration meet you there.

Summer, it seems, has much to teach me.

One of my favorite ways to spend such an opening is to sit quietly in nature and allow the world to come to me rather than going out in search of it.

This morning I took myself for a walk across the butte. At first, my mind was everywhere except where my feet were. Song lyrics floated through my head. Conversations replayed themselves. Relationships, plans, and random thoughts all competed for attention.

Again and again, I gently brought myself back.

Pay attention.

Notice.

Be here.

As I slowed down, the world began to emerge. Wildflowers were blooming everywhere, patches of purple, white, and pink scattered across the hillside. The cactus looked ready to burst into bloom at any moment. Rabbits darted in and out of the brush, and overhead a hawk circled effortlessly in the morning air.

Eventually I found my way to a marble overlook bench and sat down. The clouds were moving toward the mountains so slowly that the movement was almost imperceptible. The kind of thing you only notice if you’ve been still for a while.

And suddenly I felt tears rising.

Nothing had happened.

Quite the opposite.

I was simply there.

Present to a summer morning.

Present to the beauty around me.

Present to my own life.

It felt like prayer.

Summer is here.

I want to pay attention and receive it.

xo Mary