Summer Children

rock_summer children (3)

years of summer children

running barefoot free in

the dusty roads ‘til dusk

& the horn of the night

train calls them home

I have a favourite rock at nearby Crescent Beach that bears quiet witness to the abiding sense of what childhood summers can mean. In season and out of season finds me pausing on the gravel path before this inscription on the rock at the foot of the acacia trees kitty-corner up from the pier. “years of summer children running barefoot free. . . .” The rock’s engraving prompts questions in me, bittersweet questions I sometimes like to brush away, and at other times follow.

When was this time of summer children running barefoot free ‘til dusk? Is it still so today? If not quite so today, as if I didn’t know, do the children and adults who live here, and others who visit, nonetheless delight in liberty of spirit?

Summer can seem like a kingdom that should never end, a kingdom in which childhood ought to be joyous, lighthearted, and barefoot free. And adults should keep some of this childhood alive within. Summer can evoke Sehnsucht, the longings of the heart for goodness we have experienced in this season and those we yet wish to have. Which summer childhood memories do you cherish? Several come to mind for me: Cr.Beach, roses + ocean

getting new rubber flip-flop sandals that I wore thin by September;
seeking out the swings at Riley Park near Little Mountain, with friends or alone;
on hot days splashing in the park’s wading pool with all the many other shrieking children (standing room only);
walking to the candy store down Main Street with my 10 cent allowance;
learning to ride my friend’s two-wheeler bicycle;
tenting with my family on road trips through BC to Alberta where the green-to-turquoise lakes, white rushing rivers, majestic Rocky Mountains, and the wide-open prairie filled my heart;
looking through the open tent flaps at the magical orange moon over Osoyoos Lake, a beauty that you recall all your life;
jumping through the open surf with my parents at Long Beach, Vancouver Island;
eating blue cotton candy at the fairgrounds;
the sound of the ice cream truck;
sitting outside with my family in summer pyjamas on a hot night;
catching my first Rainbow Trout.

In some sense, I think we are all summer children. We were born for the Kingdom of Summer—isn’t that why we sigh when summer ends?

But then, as we well know, the longing for summer bliss too often disappoints. And this injured planet generates other summer memories, memories laden with sorrows, some too heavy to bear. We are perhaps summer children in a winter world.

Summer may bring weddings, thank God, but usually more funerals than weddings. Summer awakens joys, but also peculiar sorrows. That’s why I pause at this favourite beach rock with a wistfulness, a homesickness for what I have known and still long to arrive at. Summer awakens a longing in me for that better country, my true home, as C. S. Lewis depicts in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle. The everlasting country where the old are young again and where it is impossible to experience fatigue, fear, or sorrow. Where all is well again, where the best of each country lives, and where our stories will truly begin. With others, I long for this Great Beginning, the New Day. Meanwhile, with others, I cherish memories and glimpse new pictures of summer that warm my heart:

the couple at the bench overlooking the ocean, she in the wheelchair, he gently rubbing her neck, and then, having lifted her onto the bench beside him, sitting with his arm around her;
the children and father building a sandcastle together;
the grandmother with her granddaughters who are walking along beach logs;
the man flying a kite;
the mother watering the shrubbery, holding the sprinkler just right for her eager toddler to drink from;
the families picnicking;
the teenagers playing volleyball;
friends walking side by side;
taking time for Gelato;
the joyous couple on their wedding day.

I ponder the years of summer children playing ’til dusk and the horn of the night train calls them home. I reread the words of George MacDonald in his essay “The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture”: “This outward world is but a passing vision of the persistent true. We shall not live in it always. We are dwellers in a divine universe where no desires are in vain, if only they be large enough. Not even in this world do all disappointments breed only vain regrets.”

This summer I long to celebrate all the special Kingdom of Summer moments – running barefoot free – and when dusk & the horn of the night train calls, I want to remember that the best is yet to come: Home. As summer children in an often-winter world, I’m looking forward to the true Kingdom of Summer that is to come.

Thanks for reading, for listening!

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