By Janet Sheridan,Special to The Denver Post
I recently had a medical procedure requiring an IV. The nurse had trouble inserting the needle. She apologized for needing to poke me again and suggested I close my eyes and go to my happy place.
“Do you have a happy place?” she asked.
Yes, ma’am, I do: summer in my backyard. But thatap nothing new.
As a child in elementary school, the Utah summer unfurled as slowly as a peony blossom and seemed as wondrous. I unfolded, too, lifting my face to the sun and wriggling my toes in the muddy trenches that watered our vegetable garden. Around me, air that smelled of wild roses, worked earth, and mysterious possibilities teased the leaves of the cottonwoods until they trembled and showed their pale underbellies. Above me, the sleeping princess atop Mount Timpanogas rested comfortably, having kicked off her white down comforter. Bird calls echoed from tree to tree.
When young, I knew the soul of summer.
Of course, I also had to spend three months in the constant companionship of brothers, sisters, and chores, irksome realities that impinged on my happiness like flies buzzing a picnic table but didn’t curtail my enjoyment of summer’s feast.
Then I stopped attending to summer for 50 years, considering it no more than a pleasant setting for important warm-weather activities. In junior high, I slept out with friends and gorged on popcorn, caramels and gossip. I earned money for personal adornment by crawling muddy rows in search of strawberries or wrenching ears of corn free from stalks. In the evening, my best friend and I walked to the Dairy Queen, scouting for skinny adolescent boys on bicycles. On occasion, we found them and filled with pleasure as they rode by and shouted insults we interpreted as interest.
During high school, summer days passed in anticipation of summer nights. Every morning, I cleaned Mrs. Thomas’ large, cool house, preparing her lunch, and hoping my head wouldn’t shake like hers when I was old. Most afternoons, seeking the bronze skin of Coppertone ads and the graceful hair of Sandra Dee, I forced myself to lie in the sun in pools of sweat with my hair stretched around giant pink rollers. Evenings were spent cruising Main Street in the parade of hopefuls or visiting the A&W, where my date paid, a thank you for the pleasure of my company and bouncy hair.
Then, college summers of work and impassioned, long-distance communications with my husband-to-be began a deluge of increased responsibility that distracted me from summer for too many years.
But with the slowdown of my 60s, I began to notice again.
Now, in June, summer stutter-steps into my backyard: the still-bare aspen watch like wary chaperones as the Russian willow and Canadian cherry rush giddily into the season, wearing new green dresses. The roses swell with tight buds, pregnant with promise, while shy moonbeam coreopsis hides behind muscle-flexing tiger lilies. And self-effacing pansies, unaware of their beauty, slip quietly into view.
Birds cavort. Hummingbirds perform acrobatics before refueling in the honeysuckle. Mourning doves fly vertically into soft, lady-like landings on the lawn; and sparrows soar in swoops, even when hopping would be more efficient. Ravens stalk stiff-legged, shifting their weight side-to-side like Sumo wrestlers; and in the fountain, robins bathe unabashedly.
I stand tall in the sun and wriggle my toes in the grass, and I hold on to summer.
Janet Sheridan lives in Craig and writes a column for the Craig Daily Press.
