Lightning Jar

Recommended Listening: Ultraviolet, U2

Baby, baby, baby...light my way

I have loved summer for as long as I can remember.  The moment that bus sighed and the doors opened, I was free, and I crashed through summer proudly.  

I have chased through woods with Caladryl caked to my arms and legs, eaten more macaroni salad than should be allowed and burned my nose and shoulders with the best of them.  I’ve seen every Spielberg film and that includes the ones he executive produced, and even, gulp, seen some really bad musicians at Pine Knob.

Last night, too too late, Justin, Brody and I biked home from the park.  Kids across the neighborhood were already well past bedtime as we slipped peacefully in and out of traffic islands and street lamps. 

In a parade I could appreciate (sans the clowns), fireflies lit our way.  Every 5 seconds, wait for it, and then 500 lights flickering up over the road and in yards of houses well past caring. 

Perhaps I’m counting the days of my own errant childhood, gone before I could mourn it, but there is something about the summer that is always fleeting, and so Bro goes to bed late, as we chase and live in it for as long as we can.

I have made summer lists in my head.  Things we must do before August ends.  Some are sensational, but most revolve around the promise of Oreo cookies, rock music through an open window and chalk drawings on my driveway that will be lost with each shower, and rescued with each declaration of “draw me a moon, stars, planet and mac truck to get to them.”

This is Brody’s third summer.  The first is a blur of orange tiger lilies, naps and open windows.  That summer we lived on the nursery rocker.  There, before an open window, I would serenade him to sleep with a mixture of Spirituals, rock anthems and Disney show tunes. 

Those days I would nod off with him, both, perhaps, remembering a time when heartbeats were music.  When that first summer finally slipped away, Brody learned to nap on his own. The window remained open, the trees were still green, but Brody was growing up.

And then, just this last May, Brody erupted as only a two year old can, as Justin and I stood by, trying to reassure our little volcano that Lightning McQueen was lost, not gone.    

Finally, he was too tired to fight himself anymore, and I picked him up and brought him to the rocker.  We started with Danny’s Song,  “I’m so in love with you honey,” moved on to Rocket Man, and ended with Stand By Me.  His little frame sighed, as his breathing steadied and he slept. 

I could feel the tears slide down my face as the dream of summer opened its gracious arms and sent a warm breeze through his window.  I should have known, his first summer, that life moves too quickly and each moment is made memory before we can even process it has past.  But I didn’t.  I counted leaves and cardinals from open windows, and watched Star Wars marathons. 

Those few precious summer months of Brody’s beginning had slipped away not with a period, or an exclamation, but with a whisper that never let me know they had passed until that moment when they slipped back in and reminded me of what was now gone.

Brody can no longer sleep well on me.  I rock him to sleep everyday still with books and songs, but that day when he fell asleep on me as he had once before, I heard the voice of our first summer.  It was gentle: a soft light, a green blue.  And rather than chase it, I placed my little boy into his bed and patted his head as I always do.

At the end of June, Brody saw his first firefly.  He sat quietly as this new little life flew around him joyfully before finally trusting Bro enough to land on his hand.  His little light flickered on and off, as Brody ushered him into the world with the kindness only a child can muster.

And so Bro takes summer with a quiet grace, while I surge forward trying to fill my jar of lightning.  He is as much a sonata, as I am at times a thunderstorm, crashing forward from one moment to the next. 

And then I remember that three summer’s ago, I stopped and let summer carry me.  I gave in to time, and lived in my senses: love, light and moments.   Riding through a field of fireflies, each life new and precious, I remembered that summer has never lasted forever, but while it is here, it is a place of memory, of fireflies, of music and endless beginnings.