summer muse

Today is the official first day of summer vacation (the weekend doesn't count) and already evidence abounds of the salutary effects of open time, boredom, and heat - most especially on our creative faculties. I found the above slip of paper abandoned, writing side down, on the living room floor.

Frances completed a fantastic first grade year at a school that encourages creative and intellectual growth. That said, I've become accustomed to piles of paper in the kitchen and elsewhere featuring word searches, color-by-number type puzzles, lined paper for handwriting practice, and spelling words. In the midst of all the shaping and the forming and the socializing (a night kitchen take on school: they put that batter up to bake a delicious Frances-cake), I wasn't sure if her inner outsider artist could still manage to find expression. But oh my. After about 48 hours of reading, swimming, and staring at the ceiling fan while draped across my big bed, moaning about the horrors of boredom, the muse returned and her strange, singular poetic voice is back.

As we left church yesterday, one of our priests shook Frances's hand and asked what she planned to do with the rest of her day.

"Read, for the most part."

Which she did, in her underwear. And when it was bedtime and she hadn't finished her novel (don't call them chapter books, Mama) I told her about one of life's more luxurious pleasures: she could leave the book by her bedside and pick it up when she woke in the morning. No school, after all! So around 6:30 this morning, on my way to the kitchen, I glimpsed her in bed with her book through her cracked door. Around eight she sauntered down the stairs with a grin on her face, walked right over to me, and said, "Finished it."


Gabriel has been out of preschool for two weeks, and I thought I was eager for summer camp to start so I can get back to a routine and a semblance of productivity. But after a day at the beach with good friends, time in the garden, and run-ins with neighbors (everyone is outside!), I'm not so sure. Summer is for wide open spaces. Spontaneous expeditions that arise from a nothing-to-do-all-day kind of day. It's for general silliness, headstands in the backyard, and replicating an ad in Yoga Journal with your kids on the living room floor. They drive me nuts, but I do love the finer moments and pleasures that come of spending a long, hot day with my kids.

Finally, summer brings our anniversary - June 8th marked a decade of marriage for us. Mike gave me a camera (no more of those fuzzy inside shots), and a sonnet that he wrote (the summer muse!) titled To Accompany a Camera Presented to His Wife on the Occasion of Their Tenth Wedding Anniversary (June the Eighth, Two Thousand Twelve). I keep remembering it. It is extraordinary, truly!

For my part, I changed my name. It was time, and now I'm Meagan Howell-Brogan. Sitting in the drab Social Security office last month felt ridiculously romantic, as did keeping that big secret until Friday morning. Now to go about informing all the official type people in my life. Any tips for that process, friends?