JUNE

                                                        

 How well I remember the first days of June back when I was a budding teenager. School was out, and yes it was a happy day indeed. That elusive summer vacation I had day-dreamed about while staring out the classroom window, was now a delicious reality. When it finally came I was like a newborn calf, freed from the pen, and out to the summer pastures for the first time, and it was time to kick up my heels. There was no limit to what I was going to accomplish that summer and my mind was a virtual cornucopia of events that I had thought about since spring had sprung. Like Louie sang in his song, “I saw skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed days and the dark sacred nights.” It truly was a wonderful world.

I never made elaborate plans; I just went with the flow from swimming holes to baseball diamonds, from homemade rafts down the river, to days of just kicking a can down a dusty road with a blade of grass hanging from the corner of my mouth, and my dog by my side. Rainy days were tragic wasted days, as there were no inside activities in my plans. But then as sure as the clock slowly ticks forward and our lives spin hopelessly onward, that magical month of June that sets the stage for all of summer, evaporated and was gone. There would be no recouping the days; I could only wait for time to let it roll around once more. Always, I had the realization in the back of my mind that soon the days of my youth would not be infinite, and all to soon June would be just another warm summer month that I would be destined to work away someplace just to survive.

But then came retirement and every day was a day off, and I was obsessed with recapturing my carefree youth once more, but that was then, and now is now, and I found that nothing is the same anymore. My imagination does not let me live in that care free world I was in back then-- just remember it. All to soon the last days of June will come around, and I will have no idea what I did with the first days of the month. My life still seems to be on that same fast track, when I really want it to be on the slow track, but I don’t know how to get there or even if I can. I remember an old song sung by Waylon Jennings called “Stop the world and let me off.” Maybe that would be the answer huh? Just let me be frozen in time for a while on a warm June day, lying on my back on a lush green lawn, while overhead white puffy clouds drift across an endless blue sky.

Celia Thaxter said,  “It will be eternal summer in the grateful heart.” How well I remember when I first fell in love in summer. My heart was so full to overflowing back then-- that just another drop of love and adventure would have made it spill over. Every day was a new and exciting chapter for me. But you can’t stop the world from tilting and spinning and all to soon the days grow shorter. All to soon summer ends, like your childhood and your innocent’s. It’s not one summer that defines you, however, but the sum total of all of your summers that will complete you and write your story. So you persevere, waiting for the next summer to roll around. Life does have its encores’--- you just have to keep applauding.