As it does approximately once a year, the un-shapeliness of summer dragged me into its tar pit of despondency. It didn’t help that I recently received a particularly stinging writing rejection. What’s even the point?
Of course, I’d completely abandoned my daily pillars:
These doings are so ingrained into my well-being that I usually don’t keep track of them. But I was staring too many hours at my phone. And it’s hot outside. And I was in the middle of a so-so book. And I lost my favorite brush pen. (Excuses!)
On my desk notebook, I began to daily add this typically-internal checklist. And though it took a minute to get back into the ease of it, I do feel happier. Or at least less depressed!
Speaking of dropped traditions…this was the first summer I hadn’t read a book to my girls. It’s one of my favorite things we do together—gathering in the morning to take turns reading aloud. But this summer was filled with surgery and trips (and working extra hours to pay for said surgery and trips) and we just hadn’t been home together often enough to read anything. My oldest is going away to college (next weekend!!!!) so I decided to take a few mornings off what time remained and make it happen. What could we read in only 2.5 weeks? We settled Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine.
I hadn’t read it in years, but remembered that the chapters were like stand-alone stories (so we wouldn’t feel bereft if we didn’t get to finish). And although I couldn’t remember much of the plot, I remembered absolutely loving the book when I read it 20+ years ago.
And reader, this is just my PSA about how utterly delightful Ray Bradbury is. Dandelion Wine takes place in an Indiana suburb over the course of one summer in 1928. It’s thin on traditional plot but big on nostalgia, life, and joy:
📖One chapter is about a boy standing at his window like a conductor, orchestrating the sights and sounds of his town waking up and realizing he is alive in the world.
📖One chapter is about an old woman unable to convince two young girls that she used to be nine years old.
📖One chapter is about a family beating a rug out on the lawn and seeing it like a map—their past, present, and future outlined in the stains and dust motes.
📖One chapter is about a man inventing a failed “Happiness Machine”, which felt like an oddly prescient metaphor for modern-day phone addiction:
“Leo, the mistake you made is you forgot some hour, some day, we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made. While you’re in that thing, sure, a sunset lasts forever almost, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last. But outside, the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons. And then let’s be frank, Leo, how long can you look at a sunset? Who wants a sunset to last? Who wants perfect temperature? Who wants air smelling good always? So after awhile, who would notice? Better, for a minute or two, a sunset. After that, let’s have something else. People are like that, Leo. How could you forget?”
“Did I?”
“Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away.”
“But Lena, that’s sad.”
“No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness.”
What reads have captivated you this summer?
Hoping you’re pleasantly spending what remains of it!
xx
Lacy