Summer Heat 2024

When I was a kid, Summer was spent doing our best to find fun ways to stay cool. Dips in the kiddie pool, popsicles, and running through the sprinkler were the popular solutions to the heavy humidity that weighed us down. Living near a lake for part of my childhood also helped. My family is big into water activities, including going to the local beach, and boating when we get the chance.

Now that I am older, I don’t run through sprinklers anymore. (Bad knees) I mostly only dip my feet in the kiddie pool to cool down. Popsicles will never go out of style, but I much prefer ice cream. Trips to the local beach have become fewer and far between, but they certainly hit the spot when I do get to go.

I recently went to the beach to celebrate W.’s 5th birthday, one of my best friends children. He had a blast getting to swim in the lake with his friends, and play in the sand. I was one of the few adults with a full swim suit on, because when you go to the beach, you wear a suit in my family, so I was out in the water with the kids to make sure they stayed safe as they went deeper. The water certainly helped me not feel the sun’s heat as much. (I will be forever grateful to my parents for the swimming lessons growing up. They really help in moments like that.)

What I didn’t notice while at the party was how red my skin was getting. I did apply sunscreen part way through the event, but I was too late. When I got home, I was already feeling the tender spots on my shoulders and back. My face was pretty red as well. Thankfully I normally recover fairly quickly from sunburn. I am already back to normal, and it has only been a week, only a little bit of pealing.

Taking care of my sunburn is what reminded me of those long summer days when we would spend so much time in the sunshine, but it felt like those nasty UV rays couldn’t touch us. Maybe my parents were more liberal with the sunscreen than I remember.

Today is going to be another warm day, so make sure you stay hydrated and protect your skin from those UV rays.

Getting My Hands Dirty

Growing up I always loved going to green houses. My maternal Grandmother would tell me the names of the majority of the plants that we crossed by and would usually let me help pick out which bunch from the lot we would take home with us. Yearly trips to our local green houses has become a tradition. One that I still enjoy very much.

As I grew up I started to learn more about each type of plant and what conditions it would need to flourish. Now I have two plants that live in my room. They even have names. Apollo and Hephaestus. Apollo is a pathos plant, while Hephaestus is a small aloe. The names just made sense to me in a silly way. That same silly vibe might also be why I glued large googly eyes to the front of each of their pots. The green plant life that comes out of the pot has become hair for my silly little creatures.

Earlier this summer, when we were setting up our garden for the coming season, my grandma mentioned that our actions would have probably made her father very happy. There was three generations with their hands in the dirt and working with the very thing he had loved, plants. When my grandma was a little girl Grandpa Tom owned a greenhouse. He raised plants to sell and even grew produce for the local stores to sell in the summer time. Some of his time was spent out in the woods as a Naturalist working in the state park near his home. Nature and plants meant a great deal to him.

I never got to meet my Great Grandpa Tom, sadly. Stories that I have heard make me wish sometimes that I had been able to get to know him and learn about plants from him. He sounds like a very gentle soul that loved his girls and the natural world. So when I can get my hands in the dirt and work with plants I feel a connection to him and all that he loved.

Tonight I was watering the plants that my family has in our back yard and I couldn’t help but smile. Something as simple as watering the plants, tending to them, made me feel a profound connection. I would like to think that Grandpa Tom was looking down on me as I tended to the vegetables and feeling a sense of pride that his love for nature and all that it can produce has been handed down through the generations.

Creating natural beauty by working with dirt has always been something that I have enjoyed. I guess it is just an added bonus that it fosters a connection through many generations. Planting seeds and growing new life, bringing beauty to my little section of the world, will always make me smile.

Summer Heat

Since we are in the middle of July now, and at the height of summer I got to thinking about how I used to spend summer vacations back in grade school. We spent quite a bit of time outside and would have to find many different ways to try and beat the heat. Summer nights hold my fondest memories though.

Specifically in high school, I had a group of friends that I still care deeply for. I am blessed with friends that have stuck with me and we still often chat to this day, nine years after I graduated. Summer was spent spending time together. We would all get together at our friend M.’s house and have a bonfire. Some nights involved movies, others board games. We would fill the house with our laughter and chatter until we decided to call it a night.

I wouldn’t call us angels, but for the most part we didn’t do the rebellious or illegal things that stereotypical high schoolers do. Inside jokes would fill our time together. Teasing each other with affection and sarcasm often too place.

My favorite memory has to be when we went to a playground by M.’s house and goofed around until we needed flash lights to see the world around us. Old school playground rules came back full force. If you were matching someone next to you on the swings, then you were “married”. The guys helped us girls get as high as we could on the swings, and helped spin the merry go round (? not sure if that is what the playground version is called.). Our laughter grew with each passing antic and sometimes got to the point where we all had to take a moment and pause long enough to take some deep breaths and get a normal amount of air back into our lungs.

Summer featured the local public pool. Most years my parents would either by a year pass or pay the fee each time we went swimming, no matter where we lived. My siblings and I learned to swim quite early in life, and my parents made sure that we were strong enough that if we were on the water, and fell in, we would be okay. Because of this training, we became little fish. A trip to the pool was always welcome and we were always excited. The pool was a sure fire activity to tire us out, and even though we were exhausted by the end of the trip, we still didn’t want to leave.

I will probably always prefer seasons with less heat, like spring, but I know that those memories hold that warmth of summer and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

A Day to be Repaired

On May 28th, 2019 I had surgery on my left knee. There was quite the build up to the actual operation though. I had spent nine years trying every other option that my doctor offered to relieve the pain I was constantly living with. Nothing was showing up on the MRI scans or X-rays. No one could tell me what was causing me so much pain. I had gotten to the point that I was starting to think that there was no fix for me, and/or it was all in my head.

It all started October 10th, 2011. I had been dealing with knee issues, mainly jumpers knee, since sixth grade, but that day was different. During color guard practice for our home show that others had been setting up for to go on that night, I was turning around, and when I went to bend my knee, it gave out. Staggering amounts of pain came from my knee and I couldn’t speak through it in a normal voice. I was told by my coach who had to have been 50 yards away, that he heard what sounded like two hollow metal poles hitting each other, and when he turned to look all he found was me on the ground holding my flag like a safety blanket.

My teammates helped me off the field, and my mother was informed. She had been helping set up so she came to check on me. I iced my knee and marched through the pain that night to go on with my marching band. I told no one about the pain for the next week. The weekend after Home Show was the state compotation and I wanted to finish the season. Come Monday I couldn’t walk due to the pain.

This set of events started a sequence of many doctor appointments and treatments that ultimately lead me to being sent to the Mayo Clinic central hospital in Rochester, MN. There I met Dr. Dahm. That woman was my savior. She listened and helped me decide it was finally time to tailor a known surgery to my needs. Before I had been told that there wasn’t great odds that I would have less pain after. She didn’t promise pain reduction either, only that the structure would be repaired and that I would be able to learn to trust my knee again.

So I scheduled the operation for the summer months because I really didn’t want to be on crutches during the winter, plus I could wear shorts with the giant brace that came with recovery. My mom, grandma, and I spent the night before in a hotel. Needing to be at the hospital bright and early, and living three hours away did not mix. Doctors came in to the preop room and signed my knee to make sure we were all on the same page. Didn’t want to cut open the wrong limb. They even showed up this laser guide that helped the nurse put my IV in. My grandma was very interested in that laser thing.

The next thing I knew I was being wheeled into the cold operating room. I don’t remember much after that until I was eating dinner in my room. The doctors were pretty happy that I was hungry after, because the stomach tends to be fairly tired after surgeries.

My mom found a shirt, that I still wear these days, in the gift shop. It states proudly that I was repaired in Rochester. The laughter that shirt caused really helped me feel lighter after the surgery. What made me feel even better was when at my post op appointment, my doctor told me that they found the reason I was in so much pain for so long. The back of my knee cap was pretty damaged from rubbing on the bottom of my femur. With the structure work they did in the surgery, I no longer have to worry about that.

Recovery was quite the process. I hated not being able to do things for myself. My sister heard me complaining about that and found her own way to help me feel better. Normally I am the one who scoops the ice cream for the family when we have it. I couldn’t do that confined to a large chair in the living room though. But my sister told me to grab my lap desk, and brought me over the scoop, the ice cream, and my bowl. I was able to serve myself at least and that absolutely made my day. It was the little things like that, that made me feel more like me.

I will forever be grateful for the scars that I now carry on my knee. 36 stitches, eight weeks using crutches to walk, and four months in a brace at all times. People say that your don’t know what you got until it is gone, and those moments of recovery certainly taught me to value the ability to do things for myself, and to find joy in the little things during the day.

Summer Storms

One year my family had a reunion hosted at our local campground. We had set up in the group site so everyone could be together and the spaces used for meals would be communal. My parents had set up their big green tent which houses six people, while my sister and I were in smaller tents. Think sort of like having our own bedrooms while camping.

We didn’t expect the rain. Several of us threw on ponchos and other rain gear, mostly the younger generation, and played in the rain as it fell. The older folks laughed at our antics and sat together under the large roof structure that was at the center of the site. A smaller pop up was set up to go over the grill so we could still have our meals and various card games started to make their way to the tables as entertainment when we were done for now playing in the puddles.

That night I fell asleep to the sound of rain dancing on the outer shell of my small tent. Rain has always been one of my favorite sounds. The drops of water hitting the roof, or colliding with the windows just to run down them, helps me fall asleep. There is even a rain noise maker app on my phone for when I am having a difficult time getting my mind and body to wined down at the end of the day. It put me into such a sound sleep that it took quite a racket to wake me.

My father woke my sister and I up in the middle of the night. I was startled awake by the entirety of my tent shaking, thanks to my dad who was doing his best to get through the sleep fog. He called to me through the roar of rain and thunder, trying to get me to be awake enough to understand my situation at the time. When I moved on my air mattress, the entire thing shifted across the bottom of the tent. This action startled more awareness into me. Deciding to truly test out what I had just felt, I poked at the floor in my tent. The water outside had gotten so deep that it waved back at me with ripples.

It was by that point that I understood that I had picked a low spot in the ground for my tent, and that pretty soon the water was going to be so high that it was going to start to pour in my zippered door. I quickly, or at least as fast as I could possibly half asleep and walking on water, got out of my tent and rushed through the rain that was hammering down with my dad to the tent that he shared with my mom. Inside, my mom and sister were waiting and trying to set up a spot that would be comfy enough for us to sleep through the rest of the night.

Dad pulled the stakes that anchored our tiny tents to the ground and tried his best to pull them to higher ground. Thankfully it was this action that made it so I didn’t have to spend the following day in the same pjs. We had to find a way to dry out some of the larger things because water has a way of being a pest, but for the most part we managed to find our way through the storm.

Those memories serve as great reminders for me. The warm glow of happy faces and laughter shows me that even when the world around you is trying to throw everything it has at you, trying to knock you down, you can still dance in the rain and count on those closest to you to come to your aid when it certainly looks bleak.

Childhood Values

I was hanging out with one of my best friends the other day and we were watching her eldest child running through the sprinkler and playing in his little pool. The warm weather made it the perfect day to give him the little squirt guns that I had found recently. I became the cool adult because I engaged in a water fight with him. My shirt was soaked and my glasses speckled with droplets by the time he moved on to running through the sprinkler as it watered the grass.

These events got me thinking about my childhood and how we would entertain ourselves while on summer break. I am a 90s baby, so things like smart phones and iPads didn’t exist yet. Warm summer days were spent playing outside with the neighborhood kids, or on play dates with friends from school. Sprinklers and little kiddie pools were special treats used to try and beat the heat. If you happened to live in an area with street lights, as soon as they turned on, you were expected to be heading home for the night.

Looking back on these memories, I started thinking about how I wanted to approach raising my possible future children. I don’t want them to become attached to screens. Occasional time spent watching tv or playing on a smart device will be allowed. I treasured watching Saturday morning cartoons with my dad, while still in our pjs, eating a bowl of cereal. Also long car rides might be made a bit easier on my sanity if screen time was given.

Overall though, I think I would like them to have a childhood similar to mine. Playing outside and exploring the world while curiosity still runs deep in their bones. Learning about how the natural world works by getting their hands in the dirt. Using their imagination to create fantastical worlds that entertain the mind for hours. Making use of the warmer weather in the summer to get some vitamin D and learning to swim.

A child shouldn’t become jaded by the world until they are old enough to understand how we got to where we are, in my opinion. I want to try my best to preserve the innocent nature that they start with, for as long as I can. Fingers crossed that I can actually achieve this ideal.