It’s the constant things in life that provide comfort

It was the first day of summer, the longest day of the year.

We’d had our dinner, burgers cooked on the grill, and my daughter and I were sitting on the metal glider on the patio just outside the kitchen.

The air was sweet with the fragrance of the petunias and the roses that climb along the fence.

She was snuggled beside me, tucked under my arm. Idly, pushing against the floor, I moved the glider gently back and forth. The cats, excited by the twilight, were playing, chasing real and imagined prey in the grass. The sky was bottle blue.

It was a moment of pure contentment.

And it felt very familiar.

The world is a very different place for my children than it was when I was a child, but some things haven’t changed.

In my childhood, in the deepest part of summer, in the deepest part of the south, days ended in much the same way.

Just as the light faded and night crept into the sky edging along the horizon, fireflies started winking and swimming through the heavy, humid air. We gathered mayonnaise jars – with holes punched in the lids – and chased them, snatching the insects in midair or plucking them out of the grass before sealing them in the jar.

While we played, the grownups sat on the porch or the patio, stirring a breeze with the porch swing or glider, sipping tall glasses of iced tea.

I learned early that if I was quiet about it, and moved slowly enough, I could cling to the day for a few extra minutes. I would bring my jar full of “lightning bugs” and set it quietly on the porch floor.

Like my daughter, I moved close to my grandmother, sitting beside her on the white wood swing that hung from one end of the porch, the place she sat in the afternoon to snap green beans for dinner or to read the evening paper, and listened to her conversation with my grandfather. My grandfather always sat in one of the heavy metal chairs, the kind with a back shaped like a shell. With one long leg crossed over the other, he rocked the chair gently.

When they were on the porch I was drawn to them. It wasn’t so much what they talked about that lured me, but more the way they spoke; slow and languorous, the conversation flowing as languidly as the slight breeze that stirred as the sun went down.

They were relaxed and comfortable and enjoying one another’s company. I enjoyed watching them.

We all sat there until the streetlight came on and cast eerie shadows through the ferns that hung over the porch rail onto the side of the house. The spell usually faded about that time and I was sent in to take a bath and get into bed.

Which is exactly what I said to my daughter the other night. Time to get ready for bed.

Night had finally settled around us and the long day was over at last.