A Summer Pause

For friends and memories

This week the various obligations, combined with a visit from cherished friends, means I have not gotten it together to write for Substack.

The cherished friends come with cherished, horrifyingly brilliant and disgusting children who leap and thump and collect mud and bugs and sea creatures and, apparently, noise from everywhere in the environment. The beagle was cowering for the first hour or so, and then quickly realized the potential of these co-conspirators. They, too, think that revolting thing half-buried in the dirt and sand is worth digging up. They run laps with her on the deck, screaming and squealing and kicking her food ball as she tries to keep up. She comes in literally huffing and panting, perches on the couch for a few minutes gasping for air and looks at me—why have you not told me about this before—and then leaps off to go continue the game. She sits on the ottoman staring at them intently, as they sit across from her on the couch and share their candy from what must be fifty-pound bags of it, purchased from the sweets store in Provincetown. She’ll take her piece and crunch or chew it politely, hardly ever trying to hurl herself into the bag for another share.

Alice gets her morning attention

In the morning they greet her with a full body massage, compliments, and dropped pieces of their breakfast. She seems to be acclimating.

Today I meet with the writing instructor to see what to do next with the piece I didn’t share last week. I have two pieces due for that guy, and another one I’ve yet to even start, also hopefully for submission, so I’m quite behind in all the writing stuff.

But for now, time with these friends is the high point of my year, and clearly of Alice’s, so I’m carving out what I can of that. Soon enough they’ll be gone, and the rest will take front and center once again.

This is what summer days are made of, when done right. These moments are fewer and fewer with the passing of time. Kids grow up, dogs get old, schedules get busy, life takes over. It pays to notice when to let the other stuff slide and when to savor the little things that aren’t so little, when all is said and done. I won’t remember submission deadlines met or missed in a year or two, but I’ll remember the time my hunting dog was afraid to pass by a dead horseshoe crab, but then, later, two little girls found it and carried it onto the porch for safe-keeping. And how, even after they moved it, it took me an hour to convince the dog it was safe to walk out that front door again.