Lightning bug keeping me company – Photo: L. Weikel

Conflicted

Those of us living on the East Coast, from the mid-Atlantic up through New England, have been enjoying some glorious weather the past few days. Because of the ever-shifting transformation it affords, I adore living in a climate where we have four seasons. The past couple of days, there’s been a shift in the air. The temperatures have been just a little bit cooler. Ensconced on my porch, I’ve felt a smidgen more comfortable and less oppressed by the late afternoon heat. But I’m conflicted.

Almost like clockwork, it is obvious that we’ve entered the second half of August. The crickets are entering the phase where they no longer woo their mates with a distinct chirrup. No, they’ve entered the phase where their chirp machines are stuck in the ‘on’ position. The only interjections to their almost maddeningly intense ever-present hum are the periodic eruptions of my beloved katydids.

So what’s causing me to feel conflicted?

Ending One Love Beginning Another

I guess it’s that inevitable sense from when I was a little kid that summer was ending and school would soon resume. Nowadays it’s the reminder that I’ll soon be forced to move my wild porch office back inside where I won’t be surrounded by my birds and squirrels, raccoons and opossums, fawns and chippies and tyrannical red squirrels.

But it’s funny. I loved school growing up, so it wasn’t that I resisted re-immersing myself in the atmosphere of learning new things. In fact, from grade school through college – heck, even in law school, I was always thrilled by the prospect of starting a new school year. The smell of new books, the freshly waxed floor of the elementary school hallways, the prospect of shopping for a new pair of shoes and maybe even a slick new pencil case. (Yes; I will admit it: college bookstores were nirvana, and the advent of purveyors such as Staples allows me to continue indulging those giddy memories each and every year, even now that my own kids have outgrown the need for school supplies.)

Unstructured Time

I felt conflicted, I guess, over the loss of unstructured time. The freedom to build myself a pseudo-fort under the pine trees or back in the woods, pack myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and spend an entire day reading a book sitting on a beach towel, my back leaning against a big gray rock. Or to call my friend Chris so we could go bike riding down Cressman Road to pick berries, trying not to get our tires caught in the ruts made by tractors in that dirt road.

Or biking over to and hiking up Hexenkopf Rock, scaring ourselves as we climbed as we wondered out loud whether the stories were true of witches lighting fires at the top of that rocky edifice. Supposedly the fires were lit there to call for a gathering of their coven, since the fire could easily be seen up and down the valley.

I have to laugh now. I remember wondering who those witches were. Were they farmers’ wives? Did they live alone? Or in secret? Were the fires only lit for emergency meetings? Who were they?

What Are We Afraid Of?

Just writing the phrase ‘unstructured time’ makes me wonder at the world we’ve become. My kids had more structure than I did (because there were more organized sports at a younger age), but they still had plenty of time in the summers to read books, explore creeks, and go bike riding to nowhere in particular.

I wonder if this pandemic has pushed families to the point where kids have more opportunities to experience unstructured time. Are they spending that time by themselves and with their own imaginations, since getting together with other kids for organized activities poses unknown risks? Or does the risk of contracting Covid-19 seem less scary than the prospect of our kids having nothing specific to do?

Why do we almost always seem to think that time without structure is something to be feared?

Yeah…I remember loving unstructured time; the luxurious days of late summer. I think our society has forgotten in a lot of ways what it was like – if we ever knew – how to just hang out and be easy with ourselves. I know I’ve forgotten how to give myself permission to revel in it.

We’ve been trained to think of it as lazy. Or dangerous. But is it? I’m conflicted.

(T-462)