I've always loved summer. In my hometown of Ammon, Idaho, I ran loose from morning until night -- playing at friends' houses or in our "fort" or in the magical willow tree by the creek, riding my bike to the pool with a friend or sibling, making up various themed clubs for the neighborhood "gang," or setting up ALL the Barbie stuff owned by myself and my friends into one giant Barbie-o-rama, just in time to hear the dreaded "Your mom called and wants you to go home." Yes, I did have to clean my room and weed the garden and snap green beans (when my mom could catch me!), and I'm sure that built character, but what I remember now is the sweet, illicit wonder of freedom to a child who spent nine months of the year at a desk. The joy of finding a dime to take to Kellys' store and buy a foot-long bubble gum stick (grape was the best). Or eating fresh peas off the vine, and from the pod making a tiny boat to sail in the swamp created when creeks overflowed into the pastures behind our house. Simple things.
Though I've had to adapt, over the eighteen years we've lived in Virginia, to hot and humid instead of hot and dry, I still love summer. Though neither I (nor my kids) are chained to a desk during the school year, it still feels like freedom to wake up on a summer morning and say "What should I do today?" and just CHOOSE something. And though what I used to think of as work, I now anticipate as play (projects, writing, etc.), summer still takes me to my happy place.