Life can be staggeringly busy as a parent of three with everyone old enough to have their ideas about how the day should go and what they would like to do while there is warmth and the sun is finally shining.
Keeping up with all of this requires prioritizing, negotiating and navigation skills befitting an arctic explorer. It's enough some summer nights to leave a gal exhausted.
Today was a semi day of rest following a wonderfully full Saturday. This evening an eve of preparation for a daylong outing tomorrow to the shore we love. A place of tranquil beauty and respite from our usual busyness. But this too requires planning.
This eve I made a stop to the grocery store to purchase some items to pack. The grocery store often represents a battle ground in my mind. A place where highly processed plastic encased food is sold and I become a mental warrior for local naked produce. Yet with my clay feet I still at times find myself purchasing less than ideally. The grocery store signifies to me many of the problems rampant in our world and in my own life. If only I could view it as the place of plenty I did as a child. Alas.
Battle waged, I exited the store to find an uncommon peace come over me. I was descended upon. Like summertime dew on grass I became drenched in serenity. I felt exalted. Like dancing chaines turns on the sand as my youngest did over and over yesterday at St. Peter's Harbour beach. I first walked one way, then caught off guard by the enveloping sense of largeness, I turned to gaze at the place where the parking lot, almost empty, met the forest and then where the trees met the sky. I breathed in the air and paused a moment.
There was a lone truck parked facing me but I could not see who was in it. I then walked over to meet my daughter returning her cart and heard a voice speak from the parked truck.
"It's a beautiful summer night" they said. I turned to discover it was someone I knew from my growing up years. I instantly became self conscious as I realized that they had been watching me as I stood and stared in awe at the sky.
"Yes, it is. I was just thinking to myself that on a night like this I would rather be anywhere than this parking lot" I clumsily replied reverting back to my shyness around this person when we were teens.
As soon as the words escaped my lips I knew they were untrue. I had just felt as perfectly happy standing there grocery cart in hand, as I had ever felt anywhere, anytime.
I got in my car and as I drove away I realized that when I first left the grocery store I hadn't only left the store, but had completely escaped myself as well. The utter perfection of the temperature, the casual coolness of the dwindling light, the strange stillness of the air and the sense of a midsummer night's possibility all had conspired to enlarge my experience of my ordinary world. It had removed my need to think in terms of me, myself or I.
As I drove away I thought of what I really should have said to my parking lot companion:
"It is such a wonderfully beautiful night, so full of an uncrafted perfection only a midsummer's eve can hold, that it is able to transform Sobeys parking lot into something altogether marvelous."
May midsummer find you able to enjoy the bounty of the harvest and the peace of the wondrous present.
Sincerely,
Jill MacCormack
