As Thoughts Turn Towards Summer

It is hardly unusual for there to be tears on our family vacations. My children, clever and inventive in most aspects of life, once confined to a car can  think of no other way to pass the time beyond fighting. And I mean the type of fighting one would typically see inside a cage. So with forehead smashed against the window, I stare longingly at the ditch that runs alongside the highway and imagine myself  lying blissfully in its sweet half-pipe embrace, serenely staring up at the blue sky.  A homey culvert calling me in when the rain hits. All of it seemingly a reasonable alternative to where I am at the moment. So yes, those vacation tears are often mine.

Such was the case a few years back. Unusually though, these tears were not borne out of frustration or fatigue but of tiny, bittersweet moments. Bittersweet moments bookending our vacation, bittersweet moments of my youngest and eldest, fittingly, my bookend children.So it was on one of our first nights we found ourselves lying on the beach under a spectacular starry sky. The Milky Way and shooting stars and satellites all at the ready to ponder. I overhear a conversation between my youngest, perfect in the way all six year olds are, and my husband. Constellations are being considered. My six year old proudly points up to the sky to name the one constellation he knows,  "Old Ryan's Belt!" he exclaims. I smile and say nothing but I feel a need to reach out and stop the moment, to let him think the belt is Old Ryan's. For whatever reason I need to let him hold onto that, to hold onto something that, for whatever reason, keeps him 6 for just a moment longer. But "Orion's Belt" is mentioned. And my chance is lost. I look away and sadly consider, and there goes the first of a string of childhood imaginings that will fall away, one by one.

Our week at the beach winds down and on one of our last nights my mother falls down a flight of stairs. She is fine, the flight of stairs short, thickly carpeted. She is quickly up and on her way, gravity's look-at-me moment gone . But curiously I notice my oldest quietly crying in the corner, obviously shaken. It strikes me as odd as she is, at that age, as happy-go-lucky as they come, as it is with those with no experience with the  harsher aspects of life.  I walk over to her and quickly reassure her that Grandma is fine, just fine. She continues to cry and tells me, "but someday she won't be" and I pause, realizing another bit of something is lost. I hold back the tears and reassure her with the only words I have, "but she's fine right now, just fine".

And now, years later, Grandma is not just fine. She is horribly, unfairly unfine. There is no reaching out and stopping this moment, there is no soothing away this sadness. There is no protecting my children from this part of innocence lost and that is the hardest thing of all. They look to me for answers and explanations and I have none, not a one. All I know is some time this summer I will be staring up at the sublime night sky along the shores of Lake Michigan and the tears will come again. And again they'll be mine.