RUNNEMEDE REMEMBERED

Growing up in a small town in Southern New Jersey


Saturday, May 31, 2008

Summertime

Well, even though it's not officially summer, it feels like it her. The pool is open, and Memorial Day is gone by almost a week ago. Memorial Day is the official start of summer, right? And Labor Day is the official close, correct? It's just that the real, true calendar -- God's calendar -- is obsolete, or at least that's what some would have us think.

God made the seasons, and they change on the 21st of certain months, according to where the sun is -- or should I say where the earth is in its travel around the sun each year. So, while God's calendar isn't telling us that it's summer, man's calendar is, and for the purposes of this BLOG, we're using man's calendar.

My body thinks it's summer. I don't know whether it's because Daylight Savings Time comes so much earlier than it used to, but I think that has some bearing on my biological clock telling me it's summer. I mean, it's not that hot, just hotter -- a lot hotter -- than it's been all spring -- that is since March 21.

Today I changed the bed linens and put on the summer spread -- it's white. A foolish non-color, I know, but I love it. It's so cool, and breezy (can a color be breezy?), and sea-shore-ish. It seems to me that every beach house I was in during my childhood -- not that I was in very many beach houses -- had white linens on the beds. White, light-weight covers that served as bedspreads. I think white was not a good color (or lack thereof) for a beach house. You know what I mean -- all that sand!

Anyway, my bedroom is now officially at it's summer beach color level and I'm loving it. I enjoy my winter colors -- which are put away until mid-October (or Christmas), but I love my summer colors, because they evoke such wonderful memories of trips to the shore and being landlocked here in Northern Kentucky, I certainly do miss the beach. I am so glad that this year we're heading to the beach in September -- can't wait.

My mother always changed the linens on the beds in the spring -- far earlier than I have done it this year -- and we always had a light-weight bedspread for the summer for each bed. And they were white, what else. And changing the spreads was the excuse to do all that spring cleaning. Mom also changed the curtains in each room each spring. So new bedspread, new curtains.

I guess that's where I get my love for the white bed because it recalls to my mind a happy time, and I certainly do believe I had a happy childhood. That childhood made happy by a loving mother and father -- they loved each other, and they loved me, and I knew it.

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