The Season of Summer

I have a love-hate relationship with summer.  Amazing lightning bugs to end the day after the mosquito bites have gotten big, red, and itchy.  Plump, tasty garden produce after hours of toil to get rid of the pesky weeds.  Happy, sweaty, sandy boys who need baths every night.  Love-hate.

This season that is sandwiched between spring and fall.  This season that often drags on in its dog days or seems to fast forward when the temps dip keeping us out of the pool.  This season that hosts my birthday and adds another wrinkle to my face.  Love-hate.

When I was a kid, I loved summer; lived for summer.  School was out, my feet were on the softball diamond, our family enjoyed fires on our patio watching the stars above.  Not a care in the world.  Now, I carry sweaty boys who skin their knees, endure whining when it's time to leave the pool, skip the campfire most nights because I'm too tired to watch the stars.  Love-hate.

As a mom of young kids I feel my soul is in the season of summer.  Many days feel stagnant and humid and nothing seems to want to grow.  Days of no breeze and only thunderclouds in the distance.  Days when the mosquito is feasting.  But amidst these barren, dry days are days of refreshment.  Days of rain and cool breezes and icy lemonade in a glass that runneth over.  Love-hate.

How thankful I am that just as with any season, this season too shall pass.  And that in the dead of winter I'll long for summer once again.