The Summer I Stayed

Sometime this spring, I got the idea that maybe I would just stay home for the summer.

That might not sound particularly revolutionary, but for someone who has spent a good part of his life making a living by going somewhere else, it felt that way to me. Usually, my summer means filling up the calendar. Find the gigs, book the churches, figure out where I can go and what I can do and how I can make enough money to make the whole thing work.

This year, I didn’t do that. I stayed home.

I had no idea what that was going to look like or how I was going to make it work. I just knew I kept feeling the urge to stay put. So I did. And now, here on the first day of September, I’m looking around at what happened while I wasn’t going anywhere.

I taught a class that had been in my head for a good decade. I taught a couple of voice students. I sang twelve Sundays in a row at CSL Reno. I gathered people together to sing songs. I played music a couple of times in a local park. And I watered the garden. A lot.

Actually, I watered the garden every day. We don’t have a sprinkler system to speak of, so I became the sprinkler system. And I wouldn’t trade those twelve weeks of watering for anything.

Danny put down some wildflower seeds early in the summer and said, “Just water this area. I promise we’ll have a wildflower garden in no time.” So I did.

At first, I was just watering dirt and mulch. There was no evidence that anything was happening, but I knew there were seeds down there, so I kept watering. Eventually, little green sprouts appeared. And now we have a garden of wildflowers. That turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the summer.

Every day, I stood outside with a garden hose in my hand and watched things grow. Not metaphorically. Actual tomatoes and peppers and flowers and plants. I started noticing what had changed or bloomed since the day before. Something getting taller. Something that needed a little more water.

And I started thinking about how much growing happens where we can’t see it. Roots are growing before anything ever breaks through the ground. But the seeds still need water.

I loved on the dogs. I spent time with Danny. We went camping. I learned to cook a few new meals that were actually good enough that Danny went back for seconds—and requested them again. We built a pergola. Every morning, I walked the dogs around the block, and every evening, we walked them around Virginia Lake.

Same block. Same dogs. Same lake. Same us.

Back in the spring, I didn’t have some grand vision of what would happen if I stayed home. I didn’t know I would teach the class or cook those meals or build that pergola or learn so much from watering. But I knew something inside me said stay.

So I stayed.

Now summer gives way to whatever comes next. But for today, I celebrate what happened this summer. Not just what I did, but what I discovered simply by being here long enough to notice it.

I’ve had a few days to stop and look around at the garden, the pergola, Danny and the dogs. At the songs and the people and the meals and the ordinary mornings. At this life I apparently helped make while I thought I was just staying home.

Turns out, I didn’t need to go somewhere else to find my summer.

I was already here.

And look what grew.