Summer has finally begun In our district. School ended last week. Camps, books, beaches, lakes, skate parks, camping, kayaking, music, family, friends, and hopefully lots of ease are all possible in the next two months. The end of the school year was bumpy and uneasy for many of us.. I have, at least for the next year, stepped out of my role as a classroom teacher and am transitioning in the fall to a part time position that is being designed. I will still work with students, but in a different capacity. The big hope here is more time to volunteer in the boys’ classrooms, and a little more intention towards the writing and the race work. Big goals with substantially less income. This is a recipe for something… For now anyway, it’s time for all of us to regroup and reconnect in this gentle familiar of summer. I’d love to hear from all of you, what is one way summer allows you to restore and reconnect? With yourself? With family? With your body? With your library? Your creativity? Inspire us!
I feel a book coming on. Congrats for putting this on your plate! Can’t wait to see what transpires!
Oh, Catherine. The summer you’ve spent sounds lovely. I’ve enjoyed the photographs and the ease in each other’s company they show. And having had a family cottage to spend much of our summers at when I was a child, I know that yours will have fond memories of the familar place you return to each year.
Now that I’m an adult, the one thing that summer brings that allows me to reconnect with my family is the warmth that draws us outside and keeps us there for most of the day. We may not go far from home – my mother sold the cottage and other than visiting my in-laws we spend the summer in the city working with the children in day camps but we spend most of our weekend days in our backyard – but it’s a different world when you’re looking up at the clouds or sitting reading a book listening to the birds (in between all the rushing around and running indoors and out again that mamas do, I do find time to sit down or get even lower and lie in the grass and enjoy the sunshine on my face).
What connects me to my creativity is walking alone and imagining the directions I’ll take my writing in someday while I’m exploring our new neighbourhood leaving the children playing outside with my husband watching them while he draws at the table. I haven’t written much these last few years, but every step is surer and stronger and I know that this is helping me find my way back to it: I’m walking my way out of a seasonal depression of sorts after a couple of decades of midlife angst into an appreciation of where I am and the surety of what I really want to do with my life and that’s connecting with other people with words.