Perfect

Swimming and books - that’s all I’ve been writing about this summer, with a few forays into overplanning for travel and irrational fears about encounters with wild animals. Well, maybe not entirely irrational, since we do have coyotes swanning about the place like they own it, and every suburban neighborhood in the United States now seems to have its own black bear. 

Other than the books and the swimming, I couldn’t think of a single thing to write about today, and I thought about skipping it, just breaking my years-long daily writing streak because once the streak is broken then I don’t have to think about it anymore. Plus, I wrote a ton for work today. PLUS, I have to take the minutes at the neighborhood association meeting tonight. That’s writing, I tell you. That should count. 

But it doesn’t count. According to my own self-imposed and pretty much meaningless rules, I have to write something non-work-related every single day. There’s nothing in the world forcing me to do this except my own knowledge that I’ll feel bad if I don’t. The streak is the one ball that I have managed not to drop for the last five or more years, and I’m going to keep it in the air just a bit longer. 

*****

This summer is passing with ridiculous speed. Summer swimming will be over - not just for the summer, but forever - in two weeks. Meanwhile, we have trips to Avalon, NJ and Buffalo, NY (quick overnight trips, swimming-related), Ireland, and Ohio (not until September, so maybe it doesn’t count as a summer trip). I’m still recovering from graduation. I have to plan an end-of-year banquet and make a program for the Divisionals meet. I have to polish and finalize the meeting minutes that I took last night. And I have a job. It all seems overwhelming, and just five days after we return from Ireland, we’ll need to take our son and all his stuff to college. 

I don’t want to do any of this, except for the Ireland trip. I want languid summer days of reading and swimming and losing track of time and eating tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner. That is the big upside of this summer - our backyard tomatoes are plentiful and delicious. I can just step outside and pull a tomato off the vine, wash it, slice it, sprinkle salt on it, and then arrange the slices between two slices of toasted white bread spread with mayonnaise. Why would you ever want to eat anything else? 

*****

Have you ever participated in a cornhole tournament? That is some fun, I tell you what. Just after I finished complaining in writing yesterday, I changed and went to the neighborhood pool, where our first-ever annual cornhole tournament was about to kick off. 32 teams, 16 cornhole sets of varying quality, a picnic table where the tournament commissioner registered teams and assigned brackets, and then the bean bags started flying, just barely keeping pace with the trash talk. 

I did not enter the tournament, but I did play an exhibition round; my husband and me against our friends and neighbors. We wiped the floor with those suckers, and then I swam laps to cool off. At that point, the tournament had heated up considerably. The final four teams were tossing bags, and the buzz centered on three teams - our friends’ son and his girlfriend, my son and one of his best friends, and a pair of ringers who called their team “The Brothers,” though they did not appear to be related. They wore “Toss Like a Boss” t-shirts, and they were there to win. They even brought a cheering section. 

The Brothers eliminated their semi-final opponent, and entered the final against my son’s team, the Renegade Rogues, or something like that. Our boys got off to a rough start. Down 7 to 1, they appeared destined for a second-place finish. But the Renegades prefer to be on the right side of destiny, and they finished strong to win the match, the tournament, and the custom WWE-style championship belt. They posed for a phalanx of cell phone-wielding kids snapping photos, and walked out in triumph, the belt of victory held high above their heads. No one knows what happened to The Brothers, who made a quick escape. No one had ever seen those two guys before, and I suspect we won’t see much of them again until the next cornhole tournament. 

*****

Silly. Just so silly. But I had begun that day feeling sad enough that keeping my head up was a challenge, and I ended the day happy, knowing that I’d just been part of a perfect summer night. Like everyone else, I guess, I’d been hoping for a whole summer of perfect summer nights following perfect summer days, and it hasn’t quite shaken out that way, what with the annual spring mental health crisis hanging on until well into July. But a perfect night is a perfect night, and I’ll take it. I’m not greedy. Some people never get a perfect summer night.