Summer, in essence, is gone and it was packed with whimsy, struggle and adventure.
Road construction started on the very first day of swimming lessons on the very road we needed to take to get there. We reached our destination through other dusty byways. We met a family, made new friends and the young swimmers learned how not to sink in deep water.
Our power went out only once.
My older son discovered fishing and it became his new addiction hobby.
We didn’t go to the State Fair.
We were poor this summer and it was good. We found cheap food and visited the library, where you can always feel rich.
God sent work. And He sent helpers, like people we know from college that are now employed in an appliance store and they are willing to give you free advice and discounted parts to fix your 10-year-old dryer so you don’t have to hire a handyman.
Gifts like these were real and we were grateful.
A daily summer job meant the boys made their own lunches every night, left in the early morning and sometimes forgot to tell Mama they had plans for the evening. Dinner sat smoldering and so did Mama’s countenance as we plowed through these and other minor challenges.
We talked, we compared calendars, we conquered.
The growing of adults and the path to maturity doesn’t happen in one, exhilarating swoop. It happens in all the teeny tiny day-to-day ways.
It helps to have the attitude of love and patience toward one another. When I look back over my lifetime, I hope I will see a steady — if sometimes detoured — path of growth, maturity and the stripping away of petty, unimportant expectations of others.
As a parent, I can’t make everyone do right all the time.
But I can, by God’s grace, make it a goal to be a good example and ask forgiveness when I’m not one.
Beyond that, I just need to pray for my growing ones. As God poured patience on me in my young adulthood, so He will with my young adult progeny, who are pilgrims on their own pathway.
A few quotes from Summer 2018:
“I like to smell the runners as they go by.”
– Jonny said it at the August 2018 half-marathon in St. Paul
“All this corn everywhere….it’s so depressing.”
– Gino said it on a late summer drive through Wisconsin
Hanna, my vegan daughter, said: “Where’s my other tofu? I know I bought two.”
I said: “Keep looking – it’s there. Nobody would snitch that.”
Photo Credits:
Runners:Mārtiņš Zemlickis
My Word Soup 