Summer friends gathered

This weekend was a microcosm of how I’d like my life to actually be. We were lucky to be able to spend time with two of my closest friends and their families, the weather was gorgeous, there was plenty of activity, but also just enough plain old home time to round things out.

This make-believe world is something I think about every so often. In my perfect scenario, all my close friends live on the same block. Our kids are all roughly the same age. We have different household assets… a pool, a trampoline, a forest, a lake. We have different household professions… a doctor, a teacher, a counselor, a builder/construction professional, and someone who can cut hair.

We would make the most awesome village.

However, my village turned out very different. Friends and family scattered. And not a single one of us can cut hair. So while the make-believe awesome sauce village continues to percolate in my mind, I am quite happy to enjoy the small glimpses I get of it.

Take this weekend. My dear friend from Missouri, who I have known since preschool, brought her cuties pies to visit us. They stayed with another close friend in our town. We joined up for swimming and grilling on Friday afternoon. The kids ran and played and screamed and splashed and cried and laughed. It makes me so happy to see them picking up the roles that we had as children ourselves.  It’s not perfect, of course, there’s oddball behavior, an unusual emphasis on reading with the oldest children – even in the midst of other activities – and some tears and misunderstandings. It’s life.

But when these particular folks gather together, we have the added benefit of being all in with one another. There’s not much that they can say that I won’t understand and/or accept on some level. I think they feel the same way.

Growing old together, even as friends, has its perks. We just kinda get one another now. We aren’t carbon copies. Our lives in some ways are very different. But we just get it. We pick up like normal even when we haven’t seen one another for months.

We spent our weekend both playing and messing around at home and taking a city outing. Our families trekked into the Chicago for an El ride around town, a picnic in our old neighborhood, and grabbed some Italian ice from a vendor in a little storefront building in Logan Square. I hadn’t been to our old neighborhood for a year or so. Watching it change and grow is fascinating. I do miss it. The energy, the excitement, the anonymity. It was such fun.

After our adventure, everyone headed over to our place for backyard fun and grilling. Watching the kids take turns piling into our red wagon, and pulling one another around, brought laughter (and tears) as they attempted to defy the laws of gravity and movement.

You can see the ideas swarming in their little brains… if we all pile in this way and then she pulls us that way… yes, it’s going to work!!

Until it didn’t, and then the tears and band-aids followed.

And all too soon it was time to shove the paper plates into the garbage bags and fold up the tables and chairs. Hugs, goodbyes, and slight heartaches, knowing it will be awhile before we are all together again.

The kids went to bed feeling bone-tired. Or maybe that was Mike and me. The summer air and grilled food and laughter has a magical way of simultaneously draining us and filling us up. 

We are lucky for these days and moments. I am no good at capturing photos, but I want to capture this feeling anyway. Even if it’s just a few words.