From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

When summer arrives after a long isolating winter, I feel a special kind of enchantment. Summer breezes smell extra fine. The grass feels softer. Waves gently lick the shore. Hammocks swing slowly between backyard trees, and we sleep so well at night after playing outdoors all day.

Now that the school year is ending for the summer, we’ve celebrated Memorial Day with visits to the graves, days are longer, the sun shines more and I know that summer has officially begun.

The cardinals are flying to my bird feeders, the peonies are bursting with pink and white blossoms, the Siberian iris are glorious in their purple and gold dresses, the bees and mosquitoes have returned and the screen porch needs cleaning. All these obvious signs tell me that summer has arrived in Minnesota!

Remember when you were a kid and your mom told you to go outside and play? We got up a backyard ball game and played ante ante over the shed storing rakes and mowers, skis, skates and toboggans. Tiny tots blew bubbles through the wire wand of the bubble bottles, chasing them until they burst far up in the clouds. Older kids created plays on backyard stages. We stayed outside all day long until the supper whistle blew from the fire station then raced home on our bikes to eat with family around the kitchen table.

Today, do you have neighbors who relax in their backyards? Too many of us don’t even know our next door neighbors or have conversations with them. So many moms and dads work all day at jobs, and the kids are in day cares. Grandparents live miles away. Kids’ schedules are crammed with supervised lessons in every sport, music and languages. Do children today have free time to play?

Is the backyard no longer a place to relax like the front porch used to be the spot to greet neighbors and hear the latest news floating around the neighborhood? Do you have fond memories of a time when no one was on their phones or texting? Some days I miss those moments when technology didn’t consume our days and nights.

It’s a different scene today. If there’s a front porch, usually it’s empty of folks relaxing. The stage has been beautifully set, but no one shows up to inhabit the scene! One my daily walks, rarely do I hear laughter and chatter from backyards. Maybe the owners are inside the house watching the news or a new series on Netflix.

Remember playing dress up with trailing bridal veils and those glamorous bridesmaids’ bouffant dresses in yellow, pink and blue? I remember parading around the backyard with measured steps pretending to be in a wedding party. I knew the routine; I’d been a flower girl a few times and attended numerous weddings.

Some backyards had swing sets and slides. Jeannie Zimma’s grandparents had a playhouse in their backyard for neighbor kids to have tea parties and play house rocking our dolls. My backyard at the jail had a sweeping, weeping willow tree where I would sit with friends on high branches sharing secrets and dreams. No parent or neighbor could see us up in the tree because the leafy tendrils hung so thickly and fell to the ground. The shade was a cool spot on those sultry summer days of July and August.

Our house was across the street from the big red brick Lutheran church where kids would gather before choir practice and confirmation classes to roll down the grassy hill, squealing with delight. We’d pick dandelions and braid the yellow weeds into crowns. On lazy summer afternoons we’d stretch out on the sweet smelling grass and search for those elusive four-leaf clovers to bring good luck. If we were lucky, we might find one or two, press the clover into the thick Webster Dictionary and save them in a special box. On our cement sidewalk we’d draw hopscotch squares with chalk and jump from one block to another, scattering those nasty, sandy ant hills with our white tennis shoes.

Mom’s laundry would hang on a backyard clothes line on Mondays, her designated laundry day. I keep that same task for Manic Monday, my big day for weekly cleaning. Mom’s clothes pin bucket was a tiny dress whose skirt held wooden clothespins anchoring clothes on the lines. White sheets flapped on the two outside lines; panties, slips and bras, BVD underwear, night gowns and pajamas were hung on the inside line. No one was supposed to see the “unmentionables.”

Some summer nights we’d create a camp out tent by pinning Dad’s gray wool army blankets to the clothesline. We planned to spend the entire night outdoors but often we got too scared telling ghost stories and hearing spooky noises like footsteps outside the tent.

When we got scared, we’d get rambunctious; the pins holding the tent would pop and the blankets would fall on gigging girls underneath. We’d remember that the jail prisoners were only a few feet from our tent; that spooked us. Our imaginations, the starry black night and unidentifiable monster sounds frightened us. By midnight we abandoned our tent and ran to the safety of the back door into my house.

After the supper dishes were done, Dad liked to relax and smoke a cigarette in the backyard. We had quite the view watching all the traffic on Minnewaska Avenue. We could see who was walking the cracked sidewalks to downtown, veterans going in for a drink at the Legion Hall, someone being booked at the police station and ambulances bringing bodies to Hoplin’s Funeral Home.

On Sunday mornings we’d sit in the backyard to see who was coming to church. Of course, it was noted who didn’t come to church. Someone would probably be on the phone after church to call and ask why they didn’t get to church. Your absence was always noted and questioned.

I loved summer days in my backyard. I still love my backyard where I sit on the deck checking out the cardinals and woodpeckers at our feeder and the boats riding the waves on the lake. English politician John Lubbock wrote, “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waste of time.”

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.