It's nearly the Fourth of July and I still haven't put a toe in the water, either the ocean or a pool.  Still, summer is upon us and I am more or less ready for it.  I don't have the bathing suit body I was hoping would have magically arrived by now, but there is something about having the windows open in the morning that just delights me.  In the U.K. they don't bother with screens, a fact which always fascinates me.  I'm sure it's true other places, too, where the climate is less conducive to the happy propagation of flying bugs.  I don't understand why they don't have a house full of birds, and speaking of the birds, they must be eating something, so there ARE bugs, but I digress.

We've had no obnoxious "3 H" days yet, which, for those of you not from the area, refers to "Hazy, Hot and Humid", so I can afford to be cheerful about summer still.  As is the family tradition, modified due to the internship of Son Number One in Washington, D.C., the clan got up at "zero dark thirty" on the day of the Summer Solstice and went to Nut Island to watch the sun rise.

For the second year, Papa came with us to round out the number and the view was very pretty, although I must confess it hasn't changed much since last year.  Still, it's a lovely tradition and breakfast is always fun afterwards at the Wheel House Diner.  I said to Papa, "I married into this insanity, but why do you drag yourself out of bed at this hour when you don't have to? and he replied, "Who knows how many more times I'll be able to?" and then he laughed.
I love that he laughed.  He's 84 now, which makes it no joke, but that is how he feels about life in general, I guess.  Recently he spent hours on his hands and knees putting pansies and petunias on the outside of our hedges, where there have been no flowers, no signs of life (except weeds) in twenty years.  It looks so nice that now I find myself weeding every time I go by.  OK.  Not every time, but often.  I guess it's a break from his twice daily trips to the nursing home to visit my mother-in-law.  She doesn't recognize him most of the time, but he lives for those fleet bursts of clarity when she does.  So here's to another season with Papa, who puts me to shame in so many ways.  He's at the Y or off on a walk every day, or when the weather gets really bad he's on the rowing machine in his attic.  He dotes on his grandchildren and the feeling is beyond mutual.  And he loves me, too.  How blessed am I?  All this and chirping  birds, too.

The only reason I'm not posting a picture is my respect for the privacy of my friends and fellow classmates.  OK, also because, as predicted, I looked rather bovine compared to my image of myself, but we had SUCH a good time!  There were only two tables (plus one very popular professor) from the Class of 1974, but I think we were the loudest, happiest table in the joint.

Oh, we all started off sedately and politely enough.  Thank heavens someone brought a yearbook, because we're not all recognizable as our 40 year younger selves.  Slowly the facade of politeness and distance and trepidation started to crack, and before I knew it (or before the second glass of wine) we were laughing at things that happened forty years ago and at things that happened yesterday.  The ladylike groups from a mere 20 and 30 years out halted their quiet reminiscences as our conga line, waving a rainbow of colorful napkins, snaked through the hall.  There was a circle dance, into the center of which even the demurest of us was drawn to display her moves, and there was a charming waiter who danced his way into our hearts (and a sizable tip at the end of the evening).

Let me say this with complete honesty: not one of us was drunk or anywhere near it.  We have simply arrived at that glorious, liberating age of "Take it or leave it, Toots, this is me!" which is turning out to be a lot more fun than any of us had expected it to be.  Some of my companions were names to me, vaguely remembered.  Some I swear I have never heard of or seen in my life.  None of that mattered by the end of the evening.  We rejoiced in the renewed spirit of our college.  Sister Janet Eisner, now President of the school, and the Dean of Students when we entered all those years ago, has simply changed her hair from black to silver, but remained unchanged and as dynamic as ever.  She took a moribund girls' college and transformed it into one of the up and coming science centers of Boston, working closely with local hospitals and research laboratories.  She even let boys in, and the place still stands.  
 
To put it another way, everything and nothing has changed.  Like us, Emmanuel doesn't look the way it looked forty years ago.  But in among the glass and steel state-of-the-art buildings one can still see the red brick of the Administration Building (where I was married in the chapel) and the dormitories which face onto Brookline Avenue.  There are enough old bones there to identify the place, but hiding in the center is a hubbub of activity and newness.  Not unlike the members of the
Class of 1974.

I have waited all week for Saturday morning so I could sleep late.  But I have also waited all winter for the song of the birds.  As I lie awake, hours before chores or appointments compel me to stir, the trills and echoes fill my ears and my heart.  The mornings are still cool, so the windows aren't shut, and the whir of the air conditioner isn't drowning them out yet.  I hear the traffic from the highway, which I never notice hearing during the day.  An airplane passes overhead.  The gentle wind stirs the curtains and glides past my sleep-warmed body with a delicious chill.   

There are many different varieties of birds in Massachusetts.  I recognize the cardinal's call, and the robin's, but the rest is just a symphony of trills and chirps and tweets to me, punctuated with the occasional raucousness of the crow.  One of these days I'll get a book and learn about the singers of this song.  For this moment I am content to just listen, and to memorize the sound.  I want to imprint it into my heart so that when winter comes again, or when my ears are too old to hear those high notes, I'll be able to open this memory like a music box and play it back note for note and smile as I bless the Composer.