“Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days and each other to play with and the books from the library. In the summer, you could take out 10 books at a time, instead of three, and keep them a month, instead of two weeks.”
-Edward Eager, “Half Magic”
There’s nothing to quicken the pulse quite like the approach of summer. That foretaste of eternity combining jovial exertion and activity with languid relaxation. A wonderful summer will not simply happen to you. There is an art to summering well.
The above passage from the opening of “Half Magic” details how four siblings plan to spend their summer. While their widowed mother must work, the severe Miss Bick oversees their days, refusing to take them to the lake or out to the country for idyllic summer activity. Nevertheless, the mere prospect of extended library lending and wide-open days excite them.
The narrator continues that of the 10 allowed books, only four can be fiction, which causes great consternation for the children, because, of course, fiction books are the best. One child likes poetry, another drama, and one is still small enough for picture books. So, they make do with their allotted library treasures and relish the experience of summer, even a quite dull one.
There is wisdom in the simplicity of poor children’s modest summer adventures. When people can afford activities and events, lessons and new toys, somehow they all fail to satisfy. There is nothing glamorous about poverty and lack, but limits can be a great asset in finding true contentment and enjoyment.
It is difficult to find that balance between structure and compelling suggestions, like Aunt Emily packing bird books for a morning hike, and the open-ended boredom of a liberating afternoon when nothing specific has to be accomplished.
Essential to a good summer is a body of water if you can find one or, at least, somewhere outside in the shade. Crafting a summer reading list can ensure hours of delight. Added to this year’s list is “Summer of the Monkeys” by Wilson Rawl, “Rascal” by Sterling North, and a re-read of B.B.’s charming sylvan odyssey “The Little Grey Men.” Also, there are, in a surprising turn of events, yet more novels about princesses by our favorite George MacDonald, so those are also a possibility. The above-mentioned “Half Magic” is a quick and satisfying read aloud. Towering stacks of picture books, armfuls of novels: let it not be said that you skimped on reading material!
Sun, water, and books; this is sometimes a dangerous combination leading to wet pages threatening to glob together as they dry, sand in the spine of the book (the horror!), but can be the very best of the summer season. As I wrote three years ago on the very same subject:
For the very young, summer stretches ahead like an unending road. Their perception of time is so novel that two or three months is still a very long time. For adults, so often time passes in a bewildering blink, and we think that the way to make time expand is to seek new and different experiences. There is a way of seeking instead to be childlike: captivated by repetition and sameness.
Whether a summer vacation consists of eight weeks at the pool or two weeks in a cabin by the lake, the unrelenting sun lingering in the evening sky, the dull days of boredom becoming long stretches of wonder, and the delights so different from every other season invite meditations on eternity. There may be a moment when you are stunned at the sensory overload, putting a foot down into soft sand, a glimmer of water on the horizon, sheltering pines above. That astonishing presence—sameness and difference all at once—sears itself into memory leaving the conviction that this is a moment to savor for the rest of your life, a hint of an eternity to come.
