Summer

The focal point of the day is swimming. We live within walking distance of a community pool.  This walk is just a little bit too far for comfort on a hot day but we take it anyway knowing the water will feel all the better for it. It always does.

Hardly anybody uses community pools in our community anymore so we have the whole thing nearly to ourselves. We play mermaids.

The we is my nine-year-old daughter and me.  I call her Witch Baby but her real name is Margaret. She reminds me of Hester's Pearl, hence the name.  Plus she has powers. I'm only bothering to tell you this because I have the time. I'm not in a hurry right now.

We have been using the hour before pool time for household tasks that never get done during the school year.  Yesterday we reorganized a giant closet of chaos and turned it into a usable space. Today we touched up the ceiling where I smudged it with the wall paint two years ago.  These were impossible, insurmountable tasks. Together did them in less than 45 minutes. 

This morning she drew pictures in the garden while I wrote out a new book idea longhand. Tomorrow is for scrubbing the windowsills and then movies. Sunday we're thinking church. Then maybe baking something. Monday the pool. Maybe a roller blade trip. Library. Reading time. We're on chapter two of The Hobbit, shared reading at bedtime. Which is whenever we're tired.

Tonight I'm going to hear Sharon Olds and Robert Hass read their poetry at a benefit for Squaw Valley Community of Writers. My older daughter is coming with me. She is tired from working but has kindly agreed to be my date for the evening. 

This is the first summer in a long time that I haven't worked.  I'm off school, in between novels. I feel untethered to the earth without work. I cling to the household tasks, the pool, the poetry like an astronaut to a lifeline, bouncing from satellite to satellite searching for gravity. I protect my children's downtime so that they never turn to a job or employer for evidence of their personhood. They make their own gravity.

Tomorrow morning I'll go for a long walk and think of things. I won't look at the time. I'll think of what to write next, of the kind of woman I want to be, of what sorts of hummingbirds are knocking around my backyard, of nothing. Maybe I'll float away for a while. Maybe I will come back to earth.

Weekday mornings are so unbelievably hectic.