The Joys of Summer

🎵🎵🎵 “I can tell you my love for you will still be strong, after the joys of summer have gone.  . . . “  Oh, wait. . . that’s not how it goes, exactly.  My next-door neighbor has a new habit of listening to his radio in his garage while he goes out of town for the weekend. The station has a limited repertoire, Don Henley’s Boys of Summer, J. Geils Band’s Angel is a Centerfold, and Bob Segar’s Old Time Rock and Roll seem to be the mainstays. Pick one for your ear worm, any will do.  

One of my family’s dear ones has a bad cancer.  Enough with the cancer, right? And one glance at the news or Facebook will set you back a little too. Thank God we got the boys out of the cave. I say we, because weren’t we all on the same team for a moment in time? 

Yesterday I went to the eye doctor for the second time in two weeks. The fun visual field test (the lady said I had excellent concentration, by the way) revealed what Dr. Flirt had suspected. Turns out he didn’t just want to see my smiling face again. . . my peripheral vision is dying. He showed me the little picture of the areas where blind spots are developing, spots where the pressure in my eyes has irreparably damaged the optic nerves. Cue lifetime glaucoma treatment. Thank God for that, right? What would Grandma Gene have given to put drops in twice a day for a few decades to preserve his vision? I’m gonna be fine. Anyways, there is a kid who shows up at my studio every week with a contagious grin on his face and tells me about the joys in his life and he can’t see a darn thing. He’s off to sleep-a-way camp next week so I think I can put some drops in my eyes. 

Last night I started reading a timely book, The Book of Joy, by his holiness the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop Emeritus of Southern Africa.  I love me a good book co-written by a Catholic and a Buddhist. They are quick to mention that of the seven billion people on the planet one billion are neither Lutheran or Buddhist (go figure) and apparently those people can achieve joy and deserve joy in spite of their agnostic state. What can these two symbols of exile and apartheid possibly have to say about joy? Well, the elephant in their rooms is that it is not contingent upon political satisfaction or social justice. 

My kids and Bill and I talk a lot about joy. Joy versus fun. Fun is a new American Girl doll, joy is passing it on to another little girl.  Fun is a trip to Nickelodeon Universe. Joy is getting selected to play in master classes  and private lessons with Seymour Bernstein and Andrew Staupe, getting to play a Chopin Etude on an honors recital and being a finalist in a Chopin contest. Congrats to Calvin on those achievements from his audition at the Young Artist’s World Piano Festival yesterday--because he kept practicing in the summer--instead of achieving the next virtual level on your video game.  Or maybe in addition to--we are human. 

Joy is sharing your cabin with your friends. Mary’s school friends are here this weekend and they played board games in the car on the drive in the pouring rain instead of vegging out to a video. They helped me unload the car in mosquito land. 

I put on my new glasses this morning and looked out the cabin bathroom window while I brushed my teeth. The loon family of mama and daddy and the two adolescents swam by. The babies are almost as big as the grown ups. How ironic. How big do the babies have to be before the eagles can’t scoop them up for dessert? When can those loon parents ever relax? When can those babies drive to band camp in Duluth all by themselves? I don’t know.  If I worry about every screech in the night I will never enjoy the loon family. That is the price we pay for having Eagles. 

I’m only fifty. It’s a great time to commit to being joyful. I have great mentors. My dad never complained about dying from cancer. My mom and my in-laws never complain about pushing eighty. Here’s a great quote from another great religion, “the challenges we face, are simply not the making of God.” 

How much time do we waste making up stuff to worry about or worrying about things we have absolutely no control over. How do Desmond Tutu and Dalai Lama hold the world in compassion without going to the dark side?  The first chapter of the book is titled, “Why Are You Not Morose?”  Apparently you can care about the suffering of the world and still have a good day.  Not that I have achieved this.  I’m still working on having a good day with 4-5 hours of sleep. 

I got a new phone case that says Choose Joy with some pretty flowers. Flowers bring me great joy--flowers in the yard, flowers on my shoes. Flowers on shirts. Flowers on my phone case. The problem with the phone case is only that when I’m on my phone, or checking email and Facebook I can’t see the Choose Joy part, it’s on the back of the phone, the part you see when it’s face down on the table.  Note to self. . . 

The girls are in the boat-house. They will be waking up in a minute and we are off to pick raspberries at the Wallin Farm.  Between worrying about the girls and the loons and the eagles I didn’t get much sleep last night, but at least for today, I’m choosing joy.  Whip cream and fresh berries for lunch won’t hurt the joy meter either. 

I hope you are finding your own joys of summer. 

Sara 🎶🎶