TheBanyanTree: All Dressed Up and No Where to Go

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Summer has arrived in St. Paul, MN.  The dreary days of no sun and lots of
rain have ended.  The blue sky is displaying the sun in its full glory and
lights up a world that is lush and green.  The flowers in pots sitting on
porches, nestled into corners of decks, in gardens, and the wildflowers
along the walking paths in parks are breathtakingly beautiful this year.
There was payoff in enduring the mini-monsoon season and it’s summer beauty
at its height.

It hasn’t been hot yet.  Some of my fellow Minnesotans flip the switch to
their air conditioners at 70 degrees and never turn them off all summer.
But I love leaving the windows open as long as I can, letting the warm
summer breezes waft through the house.  My ears love collecting the sounds
of song birds, children playing, lawn mowers, and dogs barking.  We almost
become deaf in the soundless winter, as we’re barricaded in our houses from
the cold.  My nose captures the smell of hot charcoal and barbeque sauce
from grills throughout the neighborhood and the wood smoke smell from my
neighbor’s fire pit.

I love summer with its promise of lazy days and endless dusks as we approach
the solstice.  My work life is churning along as intense as ever, but the
minute I get into my car and fight the rush hour home, there is something
inside me that begins to slow down, to beach mode, where sitting outside
doing nothing is acceptable.  Wearing shorts and tank tops instead of coats
and jeans and heavy sweaters lightens me up somehow and I feel I can take
the time to watch a butterfly go from flower to flower collecting nectar.

Our house projects are done.  Ray has done massive amounts of painting.  Our
windows and screens are sparkling clean.  We have a new floor in the
kitchen.  Our house is stripped to bare bones.  We keep the yard mowed and
the dog poop picked up.  Our garden is ravishing this summer.  Our home is
at its Sunday best and we have the rest of the summer off from projects, and
now we are waiting, waiting, and waiting . . .

Because no one has come to look at the house.  We dropped the price $5,000.
No takers.  My agent is working hard on this.  She has an ad for tomorrow’s
paper.  She’s called other agents.  She scheduled an open house for us next
Sunday and a realtors’ open house next Tuesday.  We live in a good
neighborhood, but I don’t think it’s a “hot” neighborhood right now.  There
are several homes for sale around us and none of them are getting sold.
There are some beautiful houses coming on the market, and I can’t do a darn
thing about them.  I can’t even go look, because I have no leverage.  I don’
t dare do a non-contingent mortgage, because I don’t have any traffic
looking at my house right now, so the risk is too high.  So we wait.

My grandson graduated from kindergarten this week.  I love his old school
with its creaky wooden floors.  There is a fireplace in his classroom, which
is bricked up now, but it’s fun to imagine all the children who gathered
around it at one time to get warm.

There were 27 children in his class, including a set of triplets and a set
of twins, all fraternal, although the triplets look alike.  His teacher
obviously had a lot of control over the class, just a glance from her got
any wayward child back in line.  He was in an all-day kindergarten, rather
than half days, so I think they had more chances to learn.  I barely knew my
colors in kindergarten, but this group was writing and reading and doing
simple math.  Amazing.

I was on the verge of tears through most of the ceremony.  I wanted to stop
time for these young children, to keep them where they were, before life
begins to get cluttered and complicated, and it begins to matter if you’re
popular or doing drugs or are good at athletics.  Right now, they’re accept
each other as they are.  I loved watching the whisperings among the group as
they waited through the long program.

He’s now a first grader and the younger grandson has one more year to go
before he can go to kindergarten.  The little one was napping on Daddy’s lap
while his brother went through a major milestone in his life.

With school out, summer is officially here.  Ray and I took a walk at the
path park yesterday afternoon.  The waterpark is open.  People were having
picnics.  Ducks were swimming in the ponds.  The warm sun felt good on my
bare skin.  Our pace was slow.

And since no one is taking our house very seriously, our pace will probably
remain slow and easy the rest of the summer.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.  ~Cicero