Immersed in June
June 2024 || Houseflies, fireflies, and the fly by of summer.
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There’s a housefly whizzing by at lightning speed while the sun shines hot through our dining room curtains. I can’t be bothered, though. In fact, I’m the opposite of it. Something about this — doors opening and closing on repeat, air conditioning at full blast, the random fly finding respite inside until he meets the gridded end of the swatter — screams summer, to me.
A couple of days ago, I plucked a ladybug from those same white linen drapes and brought her outside. How discerning we are, deciding which bugs get to live and die. We delight in those that burst with light in the late-coming dark of summer, but loathe those that swarm, swat at those that itch, and curse those that cling, carrying nasty disease. I’ll never understand, even, the sheer existence of some.
For weeks, this month, I’ve missed the cicadas. And where their simmering song gave way to quiet, the sun has filled the air so thick it’s still hard to hear. When I pull into the driveway and see the red-breasted robin take shade in the leaves of our cherry tree, I faintly remember what it’s like to stand in the same spot in the middle of winter. On nights so cold and clear, each star shines and I pause to watch them twinkle, listening for the cows lowing half a mile away.
I want to miss it, and sometimes I do, but mostly, I’ve been immersed in June.
In June, the same robin clutches the weathered cedar frame of our garden beds, her mouth full of worms, and we watch as she feeds her young ones in the crook of our neighbor’s hail-dented gutters.
In June, the world pastel gives way to technicolor, and everything, even the blacktop, looks lit from within, all of it absorbing the sun and burning under our fingers still sticky from melted popsicles or wet from the pool.
In June, the days fly by with activity, despite less on the calendar. Time becomes this sinkhole, swallowing my brain cells that can’t make sense of who is where, doing what. Weeks are choppy, each one different: a delicate dance between plans and possibility.
In June, somehow more is required, though in April I longed for all the promise of freedom she’s supposed to bring. There is freedom, yes, but where space opens up, one must expend energy to protect it or look up to find it entirely gone.
In June, I feel, more than ever, how quickly it goes. First, the month since we’ve been out of school. Then, half the year. Soon, the next school year approaching. Ultimately, the kids and their childhood right along with them.
In June, they try new things on for size, the uncommon activities of summer crowded into a few weeks where they bloom, discover, grow, and become. The month we experiment with and resume traditions that shape the rest of a summer: night swims, lazy mornings, library afternoons, progressive park days, and syrupy slush runs, just because. These are the lightning bugs of summer, the ones we try to trap in glass jars to marvel at a little longer, knowing how soon they’ll vanish.
The houseflies, though? They’re the meltdowns when it’s time to do chores or leave the pool, the fights over who actually won at Battleship or Uno, the missing friends and misunderstandings, the sunburns, the heat exhaustion. I could go on.
Some days, this month, all of these have happened and more. Some days, I lay under the whirring ceiling fan in our bedroom while hot tears slip down my cheeks because I can’t. take. one. more. second.
But then, somehow, I do.
These days are filled with fun and fraught with frustration, but all of that means we’re living. Life breathing in color and heat, water and air, pleasure and conflict. A season that once felt empty to me, for so long, dissociated and dreaded, is some days so stuffed with life I can hardly believe it’s mine. And I love it.
“I got it!” I hear a voice yell from the living room and know immediately the fly has met his (un)timely end. For just a brief second I’m wistful. It was quick and pesky, but it gave spark to my attention and my understanding of this season, gone perhaps a moment too soon.
Later, the same voice will yell, yet again, "Look, Mommy!” when we head out back, his growing form becoming small as he runs off into the dark, hands stretched to grasp the electric, yellow flickers we hold near to our eyes and even closer to our hearts.
I don’t hesitate to follow his lead.
In the interest of fleeting time and all, I’m omitting my usual, carefully organized monthly rundown of all things -ing. You know, the reading, writing, watching, etc-ing stuff. For this month’s wrap-up, I’ll leave you with a list of things that brought a little more color to a month where there is already plenty and more than enough to share:
A Linky List of Things I’ve Loved in June
I finally finished Matt Bell’s Refuse to be Done and am embarrassed by how long this sat unread on my shelf GIVEN HOW INSANELY USEFUL IT IS. Highly recommend for all novelists.
After months of research and saving up, I bought new art supplies, including: Derwent Inktense paints, Derwent Inktense colored pencils, Derwent water brushes, Posca markers, and Caran d’Ache Neocolor II pastels and I am having SO. MUCH. FUN. (Shoutouts and thanks to , , and more for so masterfully demonstrating the brilliance of these tools!)
I took a photo of the sky at a stoplight, couldn’t stop thinking about it, and then made this. It makes my heart swell. I’ve never been to La Scala, so I can’t say how accurate this chopped salad is to the original, but it’s absolutely delicious. We’ve reached the point in summer break where I only want to make chopped salads or snack dinners, if I fix dinner at all. (Cereal night, anyone?)
I’ve not been able to get this poem by
or this essay by off my mind. I’m so thankful for how Substack has expanded my creative community in a way that feels endlessly generative.My favorite sunflowers are showing off, again, and I don’t hate it one bit.
Inside Out 2 was fantastic and particularly poignant with a daughter on the brink of thirteen, learning what it means to be yourself in a world telling you to be everything they are. I’ll never get over the visual of Anxiety running laps around the control panel or what playing hockey was like for Riley when Joy was at the helm. Tears streamed from my eyes (and had been, really, since her Anxiety-driven belief echoed out) as I thought, “That. That is how I want to feel when I’m writing… living… doing anything, really.”
I don’t even care how basic, vanilla, or cheugy it is that Coldplay is one of my favorite bands. Their new single “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” made me gasp and say aloud, to no one, “Will could totally be singing this!” That is, William Livingston, the brokenhearted and cautious, but increasingly hopeful (male) main character in my second (half a) novel With You Everywhere, which happens to be getting the bulk of my creative writing juices, lately.
On my birthday, in May, Cliff took me up to the Nashville Typewriter shop to take a test run on a few models I’d been researching for months. Kirk’s shop is stocked full of repaired and refurbished machines, and it was then that I fell in love with an already-claimed Olivetti Lettera 32. A few weeks later, he got ahold of another one (that I love even more) who came home last week.
Meet Alice, in all her gorgeous 60 years of life.
I know, I know. Who cares what it looks like, Kristine? How does it sound?
Well, dear readers, that’s it for this month!
I’m off to paint my nails a vibrant shade of blue, fill a cutting board full of fun, tasty things we’ll call dinner, and read to the final round of a much-needed rainstorm.
As always, I’d love to hear from you:
What’s one of your fondest summer memories?
What’s a tradition you look forward to every summer?
What’s something new you’d like to try in July?
Until next time,
This post puts so perfectly into words how I feel right now! Thank you for sharing 🩷
"summer comes to multiply." you've caught that here - zapping flies and all. here, summer means ticks and kayaking and eating so many raspberries by the handful that your fingers and face are stained purple. light until 11pm. it's abundant and busy and exhausting in every way. enjoy your gorgeous typewriter and the sunflowers! they're so darn cute!