Slow Summer

I stand beside my son at the edge of the lake.  The sun is so low in the sky that even his shadow is long.  The sunlight is golden and our shadows flicker on the water.

"Do you see our shadows on the lake?" I ask.  I wave my arms wildly so that he can see that it is my shadow.

He looks at the shadows.  He looks at me.  I can see his mind coming to grips with the idea of shadows and people.  He looks at the water again.

"Oughh!" he says excitedly, pointing at a small white stone in the water.

"You can take that stone," I say encouragingly.

He reaches down for it, picks it up neatly, lifts it out of the water and drops it into the purple plastic turreted castle mold standing upright in the sand between us.  I had scooped the purple castle mold full of cold lake water a moment ago, so the stone falls through the water and hits the bottom with a plunk.

He looks again at the place where he had found the stone.  He squats down and presses his small baby hands into the shallow water.  They come up coated in wet sand.

"Uughh," he says expressively, showing his displeasure.

"If you want to wash off your hands, put them in gently, don't press them into the sand."

He puts his hands in the water again.  The water is so shallow that I am not sure he will be able to not touch the sandy bottom, but they come out clean and glistening, small and dimpled.

Motion catches my eye.  A bird is taking off from the surface of the lake.  As it rises higher and comes closer, the brilliant green of its head glistens in the light of the setting sun.

"Look!  A mallard!  A beautiful duck with a green head!"

My son's eyes go wide with excitement and he points at the flying duck, following its path with his finger until it vanishes from sight.

"Oh, look, I think that's Daddy coming back."  Far out across the little lake, by the little island, some orange dots are bobbing towards us: the life bouys my husband and the other open water masters swimmers are wearing while swimming their weekly Wednesday night swim. 

"You want to go back to the water wheels?"

"Yeh!"  The rough hummocks of sand cause his footing to falter and he reaches up with his little hand.  I take it, his fingers wrapping around and firmly grasping just one of my fingers.  I remind myself to stand up straight, as I have discovered that he is just tall enough for me to be able to do so.  We walk slowly holding hands a few feet up the steep beach to where we had gathered our treasure trove of sand toys around us.  Two water wheels stand center stage.

My son settles himself in his spot, in reach of every toy, the king of this domain.

"Where should I pour the water?" I ask.

He points to the blue water wheel, then changes his mind and points insistently at the red water wheel.  I pour some of the water out of the purple castle mold into the red water wheel, and we both watch the spinning wheel in fascination.

Something yellow catches my eye.

"A butterfly!"  Immediately he looks up, locks his eyes onto the butterfly, and watches it flutter with concentration and awe.  I wonder if he has seen a butterfly before and imagine that to him this butterfly, like so many other things in the world, might seem like an image from a picture book come to life.  How different a brightly-colored, simplified static picture of a butterfly is from the fragile, fluttering, vanishing live butterfly he is seeing now!

The sun is warm on my shoulders and the water deceptively inviting, but I know that the water temperature is only 64 degrees and small clouds keep sliding in front of the sun.  We have had a lot of rain and cold lately and my friends have been complaining about the slow start to summer.  But I love the anticipation of summer sometimes more than summer itself.  And I would like to take this slowly-starting summer slowly.  I want a slow summer.

I want a slow summer of quiet half hours at the shore of a lake.  I want a slow summer of duck and butterfly sightings.  I want a slow summer of sitting in wet sand with my son, experimenting with rocks and water and digging and pouring.  I want a slow summer of treasuring each miraculous and precious day spent with just my firstborn child.