This Is Summer (The Sights, Sounds, and Smells of Summer)

I sit here on the wooden bench my daddy made for my tenth birthday.  The bench with six letters carefully engraved on the back by his artistic hand.  The six letters that spell my name: B-R-O-O-K-E.  I'm cuddled in my white down comforter (I have this funny little infatuation with down comforters.  Well, all blankets really).  I stare off at a small patch of buttercups in the back yard.  They were late in coming this year for some reason.  The horses contentedly graze in the pasture.  My brother runs excitedly through the second pasture.  The one past the current home of the horses.  The sky is a dull blue.  Dull only because of a thin layering of white fluffy cloud.  The specific kind of cloud that feels happy, bouncy, and childlike as it dances above our heads.  My ears pick up the faint *twertles of birds as they play like children in the treetops.  Along with the birds I hear the neighbors enjoying a bonfire and conversation.  I see the warm yellowish colored flames wave and bow, dance and curtsy in the middle of the fire ring.  Motorcycles, cars, and trucks zoom down the distant highway.  A squirrel sits on branch sassily telling the world his thoughts.  I'm not cold.  I'm not hot.  I'm a summer evening perfect.  There isn't really a breeze, but the air feels refreshing.  Scents of pine, cut grass, bird seed, and summer hit my nostrils.  The air is clean, it is fresh, it is just right.  It's perfect.  These sounds, these scents, these sights, they all remind me that there is a whole summer in front of me.  A summer waiting for me to lie on the porch, reading at dusk, sipping water tinted by the flavor of lemon, lime, cucumber, and strawberry.  A summer waiting for me to sleep on the porch staring up into the endless cosmos.  A summer waiting for me to breath, let go, and feel free.  Wonderfully free.  Enticingly free.  Joyfully free.  This is life.  This is heaven (or at least like heaven).  There are not any ways to write down on paper what this feels like.  The closest most accurate answer is summer.  Or better yet, a summer evening. 

 

*twertles (A "Brooke" word that describes the sound perfectly.)