Slow down, enjoy summer
Memorial Day has come and gone. Graves are adorned with flowers and wreaths and flags.
School has been dismissed. Summer maintenance programs begin in earnest. Teachers enjoy vacations or second jobs.
Pools and splash pads are open. Parks are full of children playing, people walking dogs (or dogs walking their people).
Summer has officially begun even though the summer solstice isn’t until June 21.
Families are enjoying vacations, camp outs, barbecues and a less stressful time schedule with children home from school.
Leafy green canopies curtain views of the Ozark hills and valleys. Streams, waterfalls, rivers and lakes are overflowing thanks to the abundance of spring rains. Wildflowers bloom. Bees and butterflies (and mosquitoes) flit about.
Grass begs mowing. Gardens beg weeding.
Does with fawns venture into the open, seeking food.
As Harry Chapin sang in “Cats in the Cradle,” we may find that if we don’t have time for our children now, they may not have time for us later, when we do have time.
Newly-hatched, naked birds chirp for their food as their parents diligently work to gather enough to nurture them.
What does summer mean to you?
Do you remember carefree days exploring, playing, imagining?
Or, as a friend recalled, do you remember days of working hard on the farm, tending food gardens and harvesting hay?
Either way, summer calls us to the outdoors, to a different pace than does the fall and winter.
Whereas it does bring a change in schedule and different demands on time and energy (and pocketbooks), it can be a time of families enjoying fellowship with one another and getting to know one another better in a less demanding atmosphere.
In our hurried, workobsessed culture, maybe we should deliberately (intentionally) slow down, set aside the clocks, watches, electronics and sit! Just sit together and watch children play.
Go fishing!
Take a hike — there are myriad walking trails in the northwest Arkansas area with every imaginable level of ease or difficulty and length.
Go cycling.
Take up a new hobby, try painting or playing a musical instrument. Try singing around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, dining al fresco.
Too often, we let the minutes, hours, days, weeks slip by and then live with regrets wishing we’d spent more time with our children, our siblings, our elderly parents.
As Harry Chapin sang in “Cats in the Cradle,” we may find that if we don’t have time for our children now, they may not have time for us later, when we do have time.
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Editor’s note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County, chosen the best small weekly newspaper in Arkansas for several years. A native of Louisiana, she moved to northwest Arkansas in 1980 to work for the Benton County Daily Record. She has nine children, six sons-in-law, a daughterin-law, two daughters-inlove, nine grandsons and