Summer Wishes

Summer. My favorite time of the year has finally arrived, and birds outside of my window are singing their cheery morning songs. I push my blankets off and roll over to check the time, but my cat, Benny, has beat me to it. He is lying next to me and my phone is hidden away in the middle of his underbelly. Distracting him with ear scratches, I retrieve my phone and kiss him on top of his head. I’m running late.

I hop out of bed and scramble around my apartment to get dressed. Throwing on my favorite knee length sundress, I hastily toss my hair into a bun and grab the picnic basket that holds the strawberry layered cake I made the night before. Right before stepping out the door, Benny reminds me that I have forgotten to feed him breakfast by jumping onto the couch and meowing at his pile of canned food stacked on the side table. I scoop some wet food onto a paper plate for him and rush out of the door, almost forgetting the picnic basket behind me.

The late morning air causes me to feel a rush of vivid emotions. I stand still on the porch to take it in for a moment. The wetness from the storm last night intensifies the scents of the trees and flowers and the smell of damp earth surrounds me. This is perfect.

Walking slowly down the street, I take in deep breaths of nature and feel the sun’s rays gently warming my skin. It is going to be a hot day. The grass and flowers already have begun to lose their morning droplets of rain. By the time I reach my sister’s front yard, I could hardly even tell it had rained the night before.

My nieces bust out of the front door as soon as they realize I have arrived. They’re both wearing matching green and white tie dye sun dresses with their blonde hair pulled back into loose braids. Their mother stands in the doorway and is looking at me with a slightly agitated look. I am picking them up an hour and a half later than when I said I would. I give her a goofy grin as an apology, and her expression lightens. She kisses the girls on their cheeks before we head out and asks me to have them back before dinner.

The girls are excited for today. I have promised them a fun day of exploring and eating cake to celebrate the first day of summer. They each grab one of my hands and almost drag me up the street towards our first stop. The aromas of coffee, pies, and fresh herbs grow stronger as we reach our favorite café. I order a hot coffee with oat milk and honey for myself, and a freshly squeezed lemonade for each of my nieces. I ask the barista for a marker to draw a sigil for fertility on my cup. When my nieces ask me what it means, I tell them that it represents something that will make me very happy. They ask me to draw one on their cups for them. I draw the sigil for growth on their cups, and I tell them that like flowers, humans require growth to be their best and most beautiful selves.

We continue on our adventure and eventually come to our main destination. The picnic area is empty, thankfully, and we choose the wooden picnic table that looks the least splintery. I ask the girls to gather as many wildflowers as they can find. They run around plucking blue violets and buttercups, piling them onto the picnic table. Once they get bored, I braid some of the flowers into their hair and tell them stories about fairies and tree spirits.

After a while, I ask them if they would like forage for wild foods like explorers do. They excitedly agree. We take a short walk along a trail, picking wild strawberries and pulling up wild onion bulbs. We snack on our finds while slipping our feet into a cold running stream nearby. I encourage them to walk barefoot through the grass and to feel the mud between their toes on the streambank. We come across a large puddle on the trail that hasn’t dried up yet, and we catch a glimpse of small frog eyes peering out from under the water. The girls convince me to try to catch it for them, but I’m no match for the speedy amphibian.

When we go back to our picnic table I pull the strawberry layered cake out of the picnic basket and my nieces squeal with delight. I have forgotten plates and forks, but they don’t mind. They pull pieces off and eat it with their bare hands. I sip my coffee between bites of cake, even though it has long gone cold. I tell the girls to think of a goal they would like to accomplish during the summer before school starts up again. I think of my own goals, needs, and wants. We think of our wishes while blowing the seeds of dandelions off of their stems and watch them float away. Then they ask me to spin them by holding their hands and turning fast enough to lift their feet off of the ground, but they are starting to grow too big for me to be able to do it properly like I used to. I feel a pang of sadness realizing that their years of early childhood are not infinite.

I arrive back to my apartment, exhausted after dropping the girls back off at my sister’s. My husband is home from work and has started to make dinner. I greet him then grab my journal and sit on the couch, where I tape some of the wildflowers leftover from the picnic to a page. I then draw a fertility sigil next to them and recite a simple spell. Benny comes over to me, interested in what I am doing. He promptly lies down across the pages of my journal as I scratch his chin. Laying a hand on his back, and feeling the vibrations of his purrs, I am lulled into to a comforting, sleepy state of mind where I happily reminisce on today’s events. I soon fall into a light sleep where I dream of stepping out of my door a year from now and basking in the sunshine of the summer solstice, holding a little baby on my hip.