Summertime is my summer school time for learning more about my body. And it’s not just what swimsuits still fit, although there’s that — and the normal summertime Trying On Of Vacation-Type Clothes, which come in a wide variety for me. There was the dressier stuff for a resort just a few weeks ago, and now, this week and again in a couple more weeks, camp clothes.
Not that I worry nearly as much with camp clothes; it’s swimsuit time for most of the day. Right now, I’m sitting at our campsite table, a michelada next to me for morning refreshment, my laptop tethering through my phone, the dog laying behind me in front of a fan, morning sunshine reflecting off calm lake waters as a child from a neighboring campsite rides her bike up and down the camp drive. Birds are singing. The remains of last night’s campfire smolder in the fire ring, a box fan keeps me cool, and a hearty breakfast of farm eggs scrambled with yesterday’s leftover bacon and some garden vegetables from a friend keep my stomach full and happy.
While resort life was fun, this is my quiet time; I colored for a while, yesterday. We watched heat lightning shoot across the sky after last night’s sunset, the occasional lightning bug drifting by and sharing a quick flash of yellow. My husband saw a shooting star; are you supposed to wish on them? If so, I haven’t asked him what he wished for, but I can’t imagine things much better than this.
Both experiences, though, are my learning periods about what my current body is like. It’s one thing to regiment myself when I am at home; I know my weight every morning, I know what I’m eating, when, and it’s nutritional content. But during these respites, it’s more about listening to what my body is telling me and understanding what it’s doing during the times when I’m not weighing myself daily, calculating food intake, controlling all those aspects. It’s learning what my body does when it’s not carefully watched — much like parents wonder how their kids act when they send them out the door to spend the night at a friend’s house or ship them off to summer camp.
Life isn’t about those check-in moments when I’m paying close attention to fueling and physical movement; it’s about all of the moments in between. It’s about the living that goes on between those markers and knowing with confidence that whatever liberties I might take during those times are ones I will recover from. Much like sending your child out the door, you know that they might be tired, cranky, and a bit wild when they come home — but those fun moments while they were out living don’t undo all the work put in before and after. In the same way, I’ve learned that I can relax a bit while I’m out enjoying myself, and can recover to where I was when I return home. And quite often, while I obviously enjoy the breaks, I’m happy to find my rhythm when I get home.
There are learning and teaching moments that simply reveal themselves at these times, and being open to them is part of what makes summer such an enjoyable time for me. It’s feeling the breeze off the lakefront on my skin, savoring a cool drink, listening for birdsong, watching a great blue heron skim the surface of the water at the opposite bank. Eliminating all the reasons for worry lets me truly appreciate the experience.
Learning what is and isn’t cool with my body can be a fun experience, as long as I use what I learn.