Summer breeze

Who doesn’t love July – summer in all its youthful exuberance? Happy childhood memories waft into my mind on the warm breeze. I remember days floating on my back in Lake Erie’s waves, gazing into a sky so deeply blue I imagined it might swallow me whole. Or afternoons spent pumping hard on my bicycle, tires singing in the heat. My friends and I rode to the nearest public pool, eight miles away, the promise of swimming all afternoon spurring us on. A nickel would buy a popsicle at the concession stand – a cool treat before the hot ride home. After supper we congregated on the school yard just down the street. We played scrub baseball, tag or hide-and-seek until the street lights came on. Then everyone went home, slept like the dead and got up the next morning to do it all over again.

A darker memory intrudes on my joyful thoughts. One sunny afternoon my friends and I helped ourselves to a few empty feed bags we found in my father’s shed. Sack races! So. Much. Fun. Our revelry screeched to a halt when my father appeared, his face stern. Pa sent my friends off and told me to return the sacks to the shed. Once there, he chastised me for taking his stuff without permission. Then he spanked me. I was shocked.

Back then spanking was a common discipline. In our house it was reserved for the most serious infractions. Pa was a kind man and spankings for me were rare. Far worse than my smarting backside was the thought that I had somehow offended him so badly. To his credit, spankings were always followed with swift and complete forgiveness, this one included. However, I struggled to understand his anger. Even so, I wasn’t about to ask for clarification.

Perched in the high branches of our maple tree, I pouted and pondered what, exactly, had happened. To this day I think his reaction was harsh. He often told me that spankings hurt him more than they did me. I wasn’t so sure about that. But one thing I never doubted, not then or now, is my father’s love for me. Although the discipline seemed severe, I believed with my whole heart that he did his best as a father. He raised me to respect others in general and him in particular. By rummaging through his shed and taking the sacks without asking, I had violated the boundary of that respect. Presumptuous sin. I accepted the lesson, hard-earned as it was.

Grief and sunshine

These days my summer bliss is tinged with melancholy. Within this month we mark the deaths of three beloved family members – my father on July 6, 1976, my brother Jim on July 8 in 2013 and my brother-in-law Terry two days after that. And a year ago on July 1, Jack and I experienced a serious motorcycle accident. The physical injuries from that have healed. The memory remains traumatic.

To be honest, sometimes I wonder why the Lord would allow all that grief into such a glorious season. But this I keep in mind – he loves me perfectly, always knows what’s best, and is one hundred percent trustworthy. I embrace that truth for what it is – blessed assurance gently permeating a bittersweet breeze.