Sorry, Thoreau, I too busy...

"Ugh, my summer is so full already." I complain, sitting at mom's table. It is the beginning of July, and I'm researching methods for teaching vocabulary for a summer committee I am on.

"How can it be full already? It hasn't happened yet!"

I know what she's getting at but, "It doesn't matter. It is. I have, like, 20 days out of the whole summer that I'm going to be home. And those days are already full."

"They're not full. They haven't happened yet."

This is a maddening response when you look at your calendar and rows of days are blocked off, week after week. Sure they're filled with people you love and things you like - things you planned yourself, things you look forward to. But when you look at in in black and white, on paper, it is suffocating.

"You can't live in the future, Maegan." She cracks open a cold Brisk Iced-Tea and sets it next to the stack of books on the table. "Life happens in moments. The past is past, and the future isn't here yet. All you have is this moment, right now."

"And I'm spending it working on STUPID VOCABULARY!" I huff. This could have been me at twelve-years old. At two years old. Mom says my first complete sentence was, "I too busy." I'm not missing the point...just not accepting it. She is right of course...it is as the Transcendentalists and earthy-crunchy-yoga-guru-self-help-book-authors say: "Only that day dawns to which we are truly awake." (Thoreau) Life happens in moments.

Flash forward a few weeks. Our camera breaks right before vacation. The first summer vacation with the baby. It's a disaster. All those fleeting Kodak moments slipping through my fingers! No pictures with the baby cousins! No "Evan in his first swimming pool." And then...

Instead of watching Evan's first family reunion on a tiny 2x3 digital screen and clicking at the opportune moment...

We wake up early in the morning and and play peek-a-boo on the bed while the fan blows the last lingering wisps of cool night air across our backs.

I stand in the pool and toss him in the air to watch him squeal with delight one more time as he splashes into my arms in the water.

We stalk around the side of the house, him just out of my reach..."I'm gonna get you!"

We laugh in the cool relief of the air conditioned back seat because he realizes, even buckled in, he can get his big toe in his mouth.

I crack up as he licks all the salt off my hand at the beach.

We share an ice-cold glass of pineapple juice with two straws, the tall ships of Salem bobbing in the background.

He rides in the backpack carrier, and I hold his tiny bare feet in my hands till he falls asleep, breathing softly behind my ear.

"We are always getting ready to live but never living," Emerson whispers, as I lay back on the lawn chair and click on my Kindle. I will myself to enjoy the moment. To not make a mental list of all the things I still want to do before we go back. To not think about how vacation will be over in two days. How everyone will pack up and drive home into those inked in boxes on the calendar. Life happens in moments. I banish the future to...the future. And it works.

When we get home, we order a new camera battery. Don't judge. You'd order a new battery, too. But I'm trying to look at my calendar differently. Even if the days look full, the moments are not. They haven't happened yet. When they do, I'll try to be ready for them. I'll try not to steal any more moments from myself by pinning them to the future. I'll let them slide through my fingers. I'll feel them, smooth like a ribbon, rough like a twined rope, the textures of life. And I won't grasp.

I'll try not to, anyway.

Sunblock and Spring Cleaning

Two weeks into July and we finally got around to spring cleaning. Tuesday was hot and humid - a perfect day for dragging things outside to wash. While Nate watched the baby, I balled up the grimy shower curtain, grabbed an old pot that I use occasionally for sterilizing diapers, and gathered a bunch of rags. I dumped them all in the grass in the back yard. Then I slathered the baby with sunblock while Nate dragged out the junglegym our neighbors handed down to us.

Sunblock is one of the things that I truly hate. I mean, I despise it. What makes it worse is I am a freckly-sunburny-got-Irish-in-me-white-girl. So I have to wear sunblock. And it drives me nuts.

It sticks to everything. It's oily and it makes your skin feel dirty all day long. If you have to use the really high SPF stuff like I do, it is literally like opening a bottle of Elmer's glue and trying to rub it all over yourself. It leaves gross, slimy fingerprints on everything you touch. (Although, once Evan left little sunblock fingerprints on my glasses, which blocked the U.V. rays on my Transitions lenses, so I had cute little un-sunglass fingerprints in front of my eyes...).

Sunblock makes it hard to turn a doorknob. And if your clothing moves just a fraction of an inch, you get this tiny sliver of a sunburn on the unprotected skin between the sunblock and your shirt. I would certainly rebel if I could...but then I remember that fateful summer.

I was at my friend's house in elementary school and we were going to go to a parade. Being a good little girl, I made sure to ask for some sun-tan-lotion. In my house, that always meant sunblock. What else would coat yourself with before heading out into the inhospitable UV rays? I fried like a piece of chicken.

It is the memory of those blisters that will keep me from foregoing the sunblock ever again. The same for my baby. So I slathered Evan with sunblock and covered him with a hat (which he kept taking off).

We met Nate in the yard and proceeded to soap down the pot, the shower curtain and the disassembled play set (effectively washing off a lot of the sunblock...) Meanwhile, Evan played with hose (supervised, of course). The water was freezing and he LOVED it. We left the rags to dry on the grass in the sun while we put the slide back together and tried it out with Evan.

Once he got over screaming that we took the hose away, he got really into the play set. We parked it under the big red maple in our yard to keep him out of the sun. As he climbed around the little windows and doors under the slide, the dirt and leaves from under the tree stuck to the sunblock on his arms and legs. It was like rolling a little vanilla soft-serve cone in sprinkles. Sorry, Evan. Get used to it!