Summers More Than Memory (Holly Schindler)

It's summer here. 

It happened suddenly, which is Missouri's way. Just a few weeks ago, I was still in coats and clicking my electric blanket on. 

Somehow, this year, the old summers feel close. Summers of long afternoons and books. Summers of car drives and ponytails, bare feet and no makeup. Summers with no deadlines. 

Some of this feeling comes every year, right on schedule. Hot weather, kids screaming when they get of the bus for the last time that year. Being out in the lawn beneath the same trees that stood when I was a little girl, reading in their shade. It can bring it all back. The old feelings can find me. 

The memories felt good, even though the summers of old were long gone.

But this year, I'm letting go. Of deadlines and five-thousand-words-a-day self-imposed requirements. Of keeping up with my online life ever hour. Of getting a book drafted two weeks faster than the last book...then two weeks faster the next time. 

I'm a caretaker these days--for my house, family members, an epileptic dog. It's a lot--I try to get dinner whipped into shape first thing in the morning, before I even think about working. I write in snatches of time, between painting and mowing and laundry and dividing meds into those weekly packs. I always helped the family, but my time is stretched thinner than it's ever been. Some of the letting-go is sheer necessity. 

And it's also a blessing. 

Because the summer of youth is still right here. It's not a memory. It exists. Maybe not in the summer's entirety, but in snatches of time, too. It's there, if you let go. It'll find you. 

~

Holly Schindler is an author of books for readers of all ages. Her debut YA, A Blue So Dark, has re-released and is available where books are sold.