I woke early this morning, just as the sun was stretching, before she had found her voice. I like to think she wakens from a restorative sleep while deep under a thick fluffy comforter coloured with shades of oranges and yellows and pinks and reds, rather than merely coming into view on my spot on our spinning planet. I do confess this is a self-absorbed vision of the science of life, but it is decidedly a more magical interpretation. I pulled on my running shoes, shoes that no longer run but prefer instead to stroll. I could call them sneakers, I suppose, though I’m not sure I bear enough gracefulness required for sneaking. I would have failed in a career as a cat-burglar, but I digress.
Summer is busy with her winding down activities – the days shortening, the nights cooler, the foliage finding their true colours, the crickets coming out of hiding, the grasshoppers giving up – which means life wakens slowly in the early morning. At first there is not much sound at all, even the breeze is silent, not bothering to brush up against a single leaf. The crows aren’t arguing nor are the squirrels exchanging boastful comments. All is still. Including me. I tiptoe around my yard, fill the water plate filled with marbles to offer a thirsty bee a safe place to pause. I peer under garden foliage to bid good morning to my friend Gretchen. She is a Maritime Garter snake. I was always afraid of snakes, since childhood, and a bit repulsed by them, but when I first discovered Gretchen in my garden, I decided to engage in a friendly manner rather than one that involved shrieking. I put water out for her to help sustain her during this period of serious drought. Gretchen and I chat. She raises her head at me, tests the essence of me with her rapid tongue, and I like to think she understands we are comrades, friends sharing this lovely space rather than competing for it.
The spiders worked their artistic wizardry overnight, the silky threads carefully cradling the droplets of morning dew. The webs come to life in the cool silent morning, like a beacon to remind us that summer is packing her bags. Abby is afraid of spiders, deeply disturbed by them yet happily lets a salamander nestle into her open palm and wiggle on to the back of her hand. It seems contradictory to me, but her mother and aunt were deathly afraid of spiders yet filled their pockets with snails and earthworms. Perhaps it is a genetic predisposition to be bothered by spiders.
Abby and I were having our week’s end swim before she headed home. The lake water was deliciously cool; the sun was bright. A small fish, a smallmouth bass that calls the lake home, swam between us, not bothered by our presence, and stayed close while we examined her with our faces close to the water’s surface. I asked Abby to pause from her determined swimming practise to soak in the moment, to store the memory of being weightless and cool, of having not a single worry, of feeling gratitude for summer and for the lake and for the sand beneath our feet and for the small waves that make us feel free and buoyant. “Let’s take it all in,” I urged, “every bit of it,” as if we might write every feeling down on the notebook in our minds so the feelings can be held on to. Abby paused but a second. “Grandma,” she replied breathlessly with a hint of impatience, eyebrows furled as she pushed her wet hair off her face. “I don’t have time. I’m busy swimming underwater,” shaking her head as if I should understand the need to conquer this swimming thing, this current challenge she is wrestling with. I nodded, understanding the urgency an eight-year-old feels when her determination to learn to swim is at full strength. I admire her vigorous tenacity, and I hope it never wanes. I shall remember the moment for both of us, should she ever want to climb onto my knee to relive this wondrous day, sometime in the future when she needs to be reminded that summers were glorious and we spent them together.
wendistewart@live.ca
