In a couple of weeks, they all go to school, and I will feel guilty about dropping their discipline problems into the laps of other more capable professionals. Despite their quarrelsomeness, I really, really feel sorry that I am not keeping them home to sit around and read The Incredible Book Eating Boy one more time with the youngers or to talk with the two olders more about To Kill a Mockingbird, which they just read and I just reread for the first time in at least 20+ years. (Why did I wait so long? I thought it was a courtroom drama. I didn’t love it the first time around so many years ago, wondered why all the fuss. But this time I had a pang in my heart and folded over every other page corner to go back to. Is it that I’ve become more sentimental in my middle age? That I’m in the south and suddenly the setting is more familiar? That I understand the difficulties of the relationships better because they remain difficult 50 years later?
The boys actually didn’t say much to me about the book, but neither did they complain when I came home from the library with the black and white movie. Instead they wanted to watch it w/o the youngers, and they wanted me to make the 10 year old wait to watch it until he had read the book. But I let him watch it, and I let the youngers watch until the courtroom drama began and then I packed them off protesting to bed.)
But it is still summer. I was happy to hear one kid complain about being bored yesterday. Finally, we are not busy. Like Jem and Dill and Scout, the kids have tired of some of their games. So we are fighting. Because when you go outside you start to sweat and the ants bite you between your toes and you don’t stop itching even when you rub the spot so hard that dirty skin starts to peel off.
But when you go outside sometimes you find a box turtle in the yard and you have to take it around the block to the vacant lot next to a creek and there you find scuppernong grapes that you teach your kids to suck on until the sweetness fades. And you notice the tiny pink portalucas that bloom in the sidewalk cracks and catch a glimpse of what you are sure is an escaped yellow parakeet flying after a mourning dove and wonder if you can call it to you and keep it as a pet. Maybe the kids spend a few moments climbing up the low branches of a twisted live oak and running through the neighbor’s sprinklers. They eat the last of the neighbor’s blueberries that are sour now and then flop in the grass and complain about the heat and beg to go swimming or to eat another popsicle. So for an hour you sit at the side of the neighbors' pool while they are at work (with permission) and pretend to read but really watch the kids compete in big splash contests and races and playing at sharks and minnows. You note with bittersweet pride and cautious approbation that the baby holds her breath under water and spins and then swims from one end of the steps to the other. She doesn’t need you to hold her in the water any more. You can sit and read your book or watch them swim away. Or dive in and race them to the other side.
