And so with sunshine and the great burst of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning all over again with summer.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
As sometimes happens, what I started to write this week and what I am now working on changed. A visit to the Botanic Gardens on a hot spring afternoon propelled me in another direction. We are not far off from the beginning of summer. And like so many years, we quickly jumped from cool rainy days to the, sometimes debilitating, heat of high summer. Because it happened so suddenly there as been little time for complaint. Although, I imagine that will come later. When the novelty of the searing heat wears off and we begin to long for a fall breeze.
Summer nostalgia often transports me back to my childhood. Surrounded by lakes and lush green forests. I had the luxury of growing up in the resort area of the Northwoods. Where people paid hundreds of dollars to experience what I took for granted. It was a utopia, where every summertime activity imaginable was available to experience at will. When I became older an invasion of teenagers from the city arrived with Corvettes and flashy Chris-Craft speed boats. Late nights and summertime flings. We lived in the moment. We all knew, if we thought about it all, it would be over before the leaves began to turn to scarlet and rust. The next summer to begin all over again.
Looking back on that time in my life, in some respects it seems like yesterday. In others it appears to have happened a million lifetimes ago. In hindsight, I suppose there are things I might have done differently. But, I have very little regret. It has a a golden time. Only now, in retrospect, do I realize how fortunate I was to have lived it.
Peace be with you.
Aging with Grace 
8 responses to “Summer Memories”
I grew up till a certain age in a sea town and we kept the house there even after moving so I totally rely on what you are saying and like you I only realised with age the luxury to be able to swim or even just look at the sea and the green if the fields or mounts all year around rather than concrete like those trapped in cities
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⭐️ Sadly, it seems, we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone.
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Wonderful memories…and such a pretty photo.
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⭐️ Thank you. I think camera lens are drawn to flowers. Sometimes, it’s hard to resist.
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What I plan to write and what I end up writing are always different. I blame it on life. Ha, ha.
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⭐️ It’s true. What is the quote? “Man makes plans and God laughs.”
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I grew up in the great North Woods of Wisconsin surrounded by beautiful balsam, birch, maple and oak trees. We lived on a lake. Far far from us were the concrete sidewalks of the city.
my city friends always wondered what was there to do out in the country? And I always wondered, what was there to do in the city. To each his own.
I am fortunate that me and my siblings inherited a Log home and a cabin (one next to the other) on a small lake in Wisconsin.
I go there and try and recapture my magical childhood every August and September. I am incredibly lucky …
and I can’t tell you how much this post resonated with me.p!
thank you
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⭐️ What a glorious inheritance! Having a place in the forest, on a lake, to escape to for a couple of months of the year.I will think of you in the late Wisconsin summer sitting by the lake.
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