On a lazy summer morning recently, I was lying in bed looking out of the second-floor window. Because there are windows at three sides and dozens of trees nearby, I always feel like I am in a treehouse. With the early morning light and some breeze, the leaves were waving and reflecting multiple colors of green. This experience, like other days I am lazing around, makes me float back to my childhood.I moved from Cleveland to Lexington, Kentucky when I was 11 years old, during fifth grade. That summer, like any summer of my childhood actually, I spent it exploring every nook and cranny of the neighborhood, like an anthropologist collecting evidence of time before. We lived in a new neighborhood, with new houses, but it was bordered on two sides by Lex's old farms that still had barns and horses and plenty to figure out. I would climb over the fence and fearlessly walk up to horses that were much larger, ones that were grazing on the bluegreen grass in the field.
I really wanted a horse, but we were not going to get one, so I pretended these were mine. I had a brush and I spent time brushing their manes and petting their faces. Even though I was 11, evidently I could make something up and believe it, because I eventually had a horse of my own - called Golden Fire - and she had a golden mane and tail and was sleek and proud. I loved this horse until we moved to a new house two years later and I had to leave her behind.
During this summer with the horses, I also found an old treehouse in one of the fields. You had to angle up an old, scraggly oak to get to the platform, but it had walls and a big door and windows, and I claimed it. It must of been someone's in yesteryear, but now I was enjoying it like an adventurer who had conquered and stayed.
The lazy days of summer are only an instant away if you free yourself to enjoy them.
