I drive slowly past the house, hoping no one is outside. If someone were in the yard, I’d feel compelled to stop, explain myself, and ask if I could come inside and look around.
It looks so different now, I hardly recognize it. Once a bright yellow with black shutters, it’s now a pale blue, with crisp white shutters and a newly attached garage.
Strangers’ home now. But not just any strangers. Strangers who have made a life here, where I once lived mine. I wonder what their story is, and what memories they are building within those walls.
Do they have children? Do the children wander through the woods behind the house and invent imaginary friends like I used to? Mine was Pepsi the Bear, who lived in a cave and told me secrets no one else could hear.
I try to picture the inside of the house now. I imagine the once-dated browns, yellows, oranges, and avocado greens of the 1970s replaced by sleek stainless steel appliances and walls painted evergreen beige or soft white.
Despite the flood of memories, I cannot recall what my childhood bedroom looked like. I remember how it felt to lie in bed and listen to the wind against the windows, how safe and small the world seemed from beneath my blankets. But the colours, the furniture, have all slipped away from my memory.
I keep driving around the neighbourhood, past the houses that once belonged to my childhood friends. They are different now, too. New siding, new roofs, unfamiliar cars in the driveways.
The people I knew are gone. I wonder where they all are, and what they became. I wonder if they ever circle back here like I do, from time to time.
I see the friend’s backyard where I fell off the swing set and broke my arm. There’s the street where I flipped over my bike and got a concussion, the sound of metal on pavement, the blur of the sky spinning overhead. And the stretch of road that connects onto a busy highway, where I once pedaled down on my tricycle, my poor mother chasing frantically after me.
Honestly, how did I make it out of here alive?
The neighbourhood feels smaller now, miniaturized by memory and time. As a child, it felt vast and limitless. But maybe that is how you are supposed to feel when you revisit the past.
It is like looking in a rearview mirror. Objects behind you appear smaller and more distant than what lies ahead. Yet some part of you still wants to keep glancing back, just to ensure the road you traveled is still there.
I take one last look around before driving away. The house, the streets, the childhood I left behind. And even though I don’t stop, even though I don’t go inside, part of me has already walked through that door, wandered the rooms, and said a quiet goodbye.
Everyone who knows me well understands that summertime is my season.
If you can’t get a hold of me (which is more often than usual), it is because I am away from my phone, enjoying a swim somewhere. I am either in a pool, a lake, or at a waterpark with my daughter.
I take most of my holiday time from work in the summer months. I spread my holidays out so I can take two or three longer breaks from work in July and August, when the weather is the best.
Summer is so beloved to me that I even have summer playlists – songs and albums that capture the essence and spirit of my summer vibe. My daughter has also adopted this habit – she will say, “Listen to this Mom! It sounds like summer music.”
Now that I am older, I realize that summer is not just my favourite season, but a way of life that best captures who I am as a person.
Spending endless hours outside, enjoying and exercising in nature.
No makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Less structure and overly planned activities.
Less work, more play.
Then, when the fall hits each year, I inevitably enter my summer withdrawal period.
Back to school for my daughter means vacations and outdoor swimming are over. School and work responsibilities will again take over, and extracurricular activities will start back up.
I go through a real and deep sadness and ache for summer that is only ever so briefly relieved by the beauty of the autumn leaves. Then, the brutal and cold Canadian winter takes over everything.
I know it’s not healthy to constantly pine away for a season that only lasts three months of the year. So I am going to try harder to find ways to keep that summer feeling alive through the rest of the year, too.
Because to be truly happy in life, I know it’s important to find ways to engage in all of it…not just the parts of it I like the best.
So I will try to find more reasons to get outside and enjoy what is beautiful about the other seasons.
I will free up more time in our lives for unplanned and unstructured activities.
Just because summer vacations are over doesn’t mean work, school and extracurriculars have to take up every free minute of our lives the rest of the year.
We all need room in our schedules to breathe. To fully relax and recharge. Not just three months out of every year.
🌟 In raising your children, you will get to live your childhood all over again, except this time, through the eyes of your parents. And once your children are grown, you will come to understand and appreciate your parents in ways you never fully expected to.
🌟 Where you once craved adventure and taking risks, parenthood will make you prioritize safety and security. When you are responsible for another human being, living on the edge doesn’t hold quite the same appeal.
🌟 You will at some point be consumed with thoughts of your own mortality. Thinking about what will happen to your children and who will take care of them once you are gone will literally keep you up at night.
🌟 Your life becomes divided into two parts: before and after children. It will become hard once you have your children to remember your old life without them.
🌟 Parenthood changes you on a molecular level. After raising your children, you will look back at the old version of yourself and it will be like looking at a complete stranger.
Life Lessons For My Daughter 