Summertime is a faded pair of jeans with pockets that feel like worn mittens. It’s the season where a barrette is used as much to hold flyaways as wildflowers in my hair. Summertime leaves the corners of my books sticky with sunscreen as I turn the pages and leave time to wander on a loose string. It’s a cool cotton dress and a soft breeze at dusk that offers goosebumps to my sun-kissed skin. Ahh, and the kisses. Yes, summertime is giggling kisses from grandkids, caring kisses from moms and dads, smiling kisses from friends, and passionate kisses from lovers. It’s a time to create memories that often don’t stand still long enough to pose: hands building sandcastles, feet tapping to live music, backs floating upon quiet waters, and heads bobbing asleep in the backseat on the ride home.
Upon my wall is a memory captured almost 15 years ago on a hot day in August. It was the week of my birthday, and my youngest child was thinking of things to gift me. Seeing that she was five years old, I knew she might need a little help.
“You know what I want for my birthday?” I asked.
My daughter beamed. “What, Mama? What do you want?”
“A big bowl of Summertime Soup!”
My daughter’s eyes looked around the house and held steady in the kitchen. “I don’t know how to make that,” she whispered with sadness, her eyes drifting from my face to the floor.
“Sure you do! But we must go outside to make it.”
I gathered each of us a basket and a bowl, and we set foot to the front door pretending on the other side awaited a magical world.
“Gather your ingredients and name them what you wish.” Bending to pick blades of grass, I said, “Here, I will call these royal emerald fries, and I’ll tear them into little bits to have in our soup.”
My daughter beamed, now understanding. For nearly an hour, we gathered ingredients. Dirt became chocolate sprinkles; pebbles became peas; berries were cherries; leaves turned into lettuce; and so forth. We mixed all our ingredients into my basket and filled our bowls with a scrumptious heaping of Summertime Soup. My daughter was the first to “finish” her soup. She sprang up, grabbed her basket, and headed to the flowerbed.
“What are you doing, love?” I asked.
“Giving you another gift,” she replied, not looking in my direction. “Just sit, Mama. Have your soup.”
I did as I was instructed. I watched as my daughter grunted and sighed, dragging a heavy basket of rocks to the sidewalk. Her hands remained as steady as her focus, and I watched her imagination transform itself into a tangible shape.
Happy with the outcome, she turned to me with dirt-caked hands and grass-stained knees. “Clap!” she exclaimed.
I clapped and laughed. I couldn’t keep my eyes off my daughter as she jumped up and down. “I’m finished! I’m finished! I did it. I made your gift, Mama!”
I stood and walked over to her side as she grabbed my hand and squeezed it extra tight. “Don’t you love it? I do!” she squealed. “Know what it is, Mama? Do you? It’s your favorite thing. I got you your favorite thing!”
I stared at her work until I could no longer see it from the tears pooling in my eyes. Going down on my knees, I pulled my daughter into me, holding her so tight that I could feel her little heartbeat against my own. She squirmed from my grip just enough to pull my face down to meet her eyes. “Don’t you love it, Mama?” She wiped away my tears as best she could.
Her small palms upon my cheeks felt like sandpaper. “You’re crying mud, Mama. I’m sorry you’re sad,” she said as she kissed my dirty face.
I laughed so hard that I cried all the more, drawing her into me as if she were a ray of clarity, innocence, and light. “They’re happy tears, my dear. Very, very happy tears.” I grabbed my camera and took a picture of my birthday gift: a beautiful haystack made of rocks. “I will keep this memory with me forever,” I told her. “Absolutely. Forever.”
My daughter, now almost 20 years old, doesn’t remember when she made me a haystack from rocks for my birthday. She does not recall Summer Soup, nor does she recollect making me clap for her creation or telling me that I was crying mud. But as I look upon the picture that I had turned into a large canvas almost 15 years ago, I cannot help but remember the bliss she and I shared — the gift of play and simplicity — the joy of celebrating a moment. And, oh, was it ever a celebration.
Even though her memory of that moment has faded, her creative and compassionate spirit remains. Even now, I gaze upon the canvas showcasing her haystack made of rocks, and I am left with nothing but childlike delight.
Perhaps summertime is much more than cotton and comfort, wildflowers and wishes. Perhaps it is a reminder to be childlike in everything from faith to fervor, forgiveness to flexibility; frolicsomeness to friendliness; fearlessness to freedom.
“At that time the followers came to Jesus. They said, ‘Who is the greatest in the holy nation of heaven?’ Jesus took a little child and put him among them. He said, ‘For sure, I tell you, unless you have a change of heart and become like a little child, you will not get into the holy nation of heaven. Whoever is without pride as this little child is the greatest in the holy nation of heaven. Whoever receives a little child because of Me receives Me’” (Matthew 18:1-5).
Tiffany Kaye Chartier
SGLY, dear reader.
(Smile, God Loves You.)
Tiffany Kaye Chartier, Author 