Do desert islands have marshmallows?

Please can it always be summer?

The kids are happy, so I am. Throw some hot dogs on the grill and you don’t have to cook — that’s my vacation. Everyone eats them, too.

The house is a happy mess — wet towels and goggles and flip-flops by the door. I don’t mind cleaning up. In the winter we get balled-up homework and tests, school shoes kicked hard across the room.

No one needs music lessons in the summer.

The music is everywhere. Although they’re running too fast and laughing too loud to hear it. And I let them stay up too late because they’re roasting marshmallows on the deck and they don’t have school the next day and even though I still have to work, they won’t mind rushing in the morning because the leagues’ playoff is tomorrow. A happy morning — that’s my vacation.

Can you save me the summer? Trap it in a jar (just not the jar with the salamanders). I’ll need it later, when the shoes smell of fresh leather instead of sweat, and they need to practice piano at contrived intervals as a pitiful escape.

I’ll need it when the thump of the basketball becomes frantic instead of fun. Nobody wants to roast marshmallows over the kitchen stove.

The summer is like fireflies. When it’s dark and you go outside and all you can see are the flaming skewers and you have to tell them to come inside even though they really don’t want to and you don’t really want them to either, but you’re the adult and it’s your job. The fireflies: flash and they’re gone. There it is, no there it is, there! You can’t catch the summer but you can catch the firefly, put it in a jar (with the salamander).

It won’t help, though. It won’t be summer; it will just be a firefly in a jar, and you won’t be able to see its light flickering in the bright kitchen when you’re sorting out school supplies and frying pancakes in a desperate, useless attempt to create a little summer as the bus comes roaring down the street, drowning out the music.

Let the firefly go.

Maybe we can move to a desert island where it’s always summer and working hard means straining muscles to build something you can use. And when you go outside it’s green, a heavy, warm, singing green, and the sky goes from one end of the world to the other, and you can learn everything you need to know by finding it out by yourself. The day starts at daybreak and ends at nightfall and you can fall asleep lying on your back and staring up at a thousand sparkling stars.

Do desert islands have marshmallows?

I think we’re stuck here, though, stuck in this place with four seasons and cold floors and oatmeal that’s too hot to eat until it’s lumpy and congealed, and phones that ring and buses that come and people who are always telling you what to do. Hot cocoa doesn’t come close to cold water. But this is the world and we make it work. We have to.

I just wish you could save me some of the summer. I’ll need it when I can’t see the stars.

Save me the summer. Save me the mess and the sweat and the laughter. Save me the love. Save me the bright white sunlight and the long days filled with all kinds of unimportant things and the most important thing.

I think I hear the bus coming.

Quick, can you save me some of the summer?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 605)