After we finished the Las Vegas plans, we realized that with my 4-day work week, and the paid holidays of the summer coming up, we have a whole bunch of 4 day weekends, and possible vacation time to use! Our fun summer plans reside in some fun trips to see the family, Memorial Day and Independence Day making these visits possible. We chose to spend the first weekend (4 days extended to 6 days with a careful use of office leave time) with my parents in the LA suburbs. We made the 700-some-mile drive in a record 9 hours and 15 minutes (as airfare for that weekend would have been $600+ for the two of us) and walked into the house I grew up in.
I love that house. It’s a good 20 miles from the beach, but compared to Utah’s heavily insulated snow-ready construction, it feels a lot like a beach house. The windows are thin, and they have that creaky sun-cracked paint sound when you crank them open. The floors creak, but it’s hard-wood the entire house through, hard-wood floors, knotty pine shelving in the kitchen and game area, wooden slabs on the walls instead of dry wall, wooden boards running the length of the ceilings instead of plaster. Slate and granite in the kitchen, but the kind that is baked from the sun instead of worn with snow, and with stains on the windowsills from raspberries and tomatoes from the garden waiting to ripen in the heat of the afternoon.
I love that house. And the best part is that it is full of windows. French doors, windows that swing open, a greenhouse with a spa drained of water and full of play-pen balls. Windows that pour sunshine in: cool in the morning, hot and yellow from the south, fading orange through the leaves in the evening. Windows that bring the faint smell of honeysuckle on the breeze when you open them.
I had time to clean up from the car trip and into some presentable clothes before I saw my family. I put on white shorts and did my hair up in a relaxed style for a hot day hanging out, and Dale asked me why I don’t experiment with outfits in Utah. I realized it had been 13 months since I’d been warm, and my husband had never seen me in the shorts I’ve owned for years.
I really enjoyed picking the berries in my mother’s side yard. I felt so picturesque hunting through the thorny vines to find the deepest red berries, so red they are nearly black, but not so ripened that they have been turned into rock hard raisins. I stepped into the garden bed, behind a wall of vines that had climbed over a 4 foot lattice and grown so densely that I couldn’t be seen by an observer from the other side, except for the rustling of leaves that result from my careful movements. I searched in the densest areas, sure that as I reached for the treasure trove of berries hidden by leaves and vines, I’d get jumped by a deadly spider! I was taking my life in my hands here. I wanted the best crop of berries, so I was not satisfied with only searching the regularly used front growths. Careful to place my steps lightly and slowly, I avoided all but the superficial scratches that come from hunting logan berries. Remembering years of summers when I had harvested concord grapes in these same garden beds, the most excited moments were when someone could find an especially large bounty of these berries for my mother. She loves these berries best of any treat in the garden, and the crop from them isn’t always large. If you could find a liter of berries from one picking, you had done well, and probably found a heretofore unknown cluster of ripe berries, going above and beyond the efforts of a regular harvester! With the help of my husband, taking berries from my hand as I leaned into precarious, and potentially painful, positions, we came out with such a harvest, and I was able to give my mother a gift.
We went to the beach and felt the hot sand on our feet. We searched for shells in the sand with my 4 year old niece, and convinced my 2 year old nephew that his father wasn’t gone into danger, just to ride on a surf board. I road on the waves too, only torso deep, as the water was still was pretty chill. I loved it as a true life-long beach lover would.
The day I went back to work this week, I recognized a different feel that hasn’t been part of my life. It’s the variety of care-free that leaves the rise and fall of waves in your heart, and the bake of salt and heat on your lips. It’s the kind of endorphins that come when everything you gaze on is in the best light, because it’s been hit by natural comfort and sun. I got to remember a time when I felt this in my life daily. I’m determined to bottle that feeling and bring it into my life continuously again.
