September 5, 2016

Summer Thanks

Dear Summer 2016:

Thank you for being too much. Thank you for being too hot and sweaty, and too exhausting, and too nutty and too intense…and also for not being long enough. And/or for being over at precisely the right moment.

Thank you for train travel, books and tea to pass the time with, and delicious sandwiches packed in wax paper. Thank you for Lake Ontario sweeping by outside the window, our companion for most of the journey. For Napanee for making me think of Avril Lavigne, and Sk8ter Boi. Can I make it any more obvious?

Thank you to friends who received us, let us sleep in your spare rooms and eat cereal from your bowls, and friends who gave us dinner and poured us wine and made us feel so entirely welcome. Thanks to friends who showed us your city and made us fall in love with someplace new.

Thank you to to High Park for always making for a perfect summer day. Thank you for your splash pad, overpriced ice cream cones, your steep grades, and sparkling pond, your chipmunks and geese for delighting and scaring us (respectively).

Thank you to Peterborough for letting us hang out for a few days. Thank you to the Millennium Park for your perilous rock structures that the children liked to leap from.

Thank you for the sunshine and your shady trees, and days beside a lake.

Thank you to the Grandparents who hosted us and their friends who let us swim in your pool (and kayak even!).

Thank you for your rainbows, dear summer. For your silver linings and consolations, your tough lessons and your toughening ones, and for your refusal to let Don*ld Tr*mp and Brexit own you. For being better than all that.

Thank you for the things that grew, even if they weren’t the lupines. Thank you for the lavender and the marigolds, and the cosmos that grow in the street and amaze us with their tenacity.

Thank to the Chihuly exhibit, for being fascinating for all of us. Thank you to the museum for your air conditioning on hot afternoons.

Thank you for the parks, and the picnics, and the piles of people I thoroughly love.

Thank you for the farmer’s market, which becoming deliciously slutty as July turned into August and the peaches got ripe. 

Thank you for the summer skies at dusk, every evening a reminder that the world is amazing.

Thank you to Ghostbusters for being ridiculously fun.

Thank you to ferry rides and the Toronto Islands, and wholly perfect days.

Thank you for afternoons passed on the Toronto Riviera.

We’re grateful for wading pools, and for the children for giving me an excuse to hang out in one. Where would I be without them?

Thank you for the picnics in the park, and Denise’s blueberry pie, and the most amazing friends a family could ask for.

Thank you to fire, for letting us make you. Thank you for only raining a little bit on our camping weekend, enabling the weekend to be so totally fun. Midway through the summer and we were still going strong.

Thank you summer for your moody skies, and unforgettable afternoons with friends.

Thanks for the big beach smiles, and one more swim before we hit the road, and so much sand in the car.

Thank you for a week at the cottage, a week that rocked everybody’s world, and left us so relaxed and happy and me only moderately rashy.

We are thankful for big jumps off the dock.

We are so thankful for hammock afternoons, and books that match our outfits (even if the book itself didn’t quite live up to the hype).

Thank you for ice cream from a truck. And ice cream from anywhere, for that matter.

Thank you for perfect refreshment over and over again.

Thank you for your green trees and your cool shade and so many things to climb on along the journey home.

Thank you for silliness with friends, at the board game cafe, and the Science Centre, and in shady backyards, and other memorable points along the way.

Thank you for your magic and your mystery tours, and for the sharks.

Thank you for your street style, your shades, and your cool attitude.

For the sunny days.

And the sparkling nights.

For your green lawns and garden hoses…

and for including all the fixings.

Thank you for your triumphs and glories and deliriously dizzy goodness.

We had a very good time.

Love,

Us