Jay's birthday is in mid June. He turned 66. We decided to have a low key birthday because Father's Day was just two days later and all the kids were coming here for a party then.
As the last five weeks had been, Jay's birthday dawned clear, blue and warm. June is usually a fairly grey, drippy experience here in Minnesota but 2020 has been like the June's I remember as a child : warm, green and free from responsibility.
June meant one thing when I was a kid: No School. Long, warm summer days with nothing to do but run around and have fun. With two different lakes one block from our front door, there was never a shortage of fun things to do in summer and we did them all. Baseball, biking, roller skating, tree climbing, woods exploring, swimming, golfing, sailing, concerts at the band stand (locals never call it the 'band shell') long walks, or sitting on our enormous front porch just reading a book and watching the world go by, all the memories are accompanied by the dry, crispy feeling of sunburn and exhaustion. We were golf club brats. Even with several beaches on two different lakes a short bike ride away, most of our swimming was done at the pool at MGC. June meant 'summer' and Summer meant The Pool. But that was a long time ago. Now we hang at the lake and The Pool is just a great memory of our younger days.
But June still means summer and the best part, too: the beginning when three long, hot, sunny, lazy months stretched out ahead of us like a prelude to Heaven.
Sure, it also meant humidity, sunburn and mosquitos but we never seemed to remember that part.
Jay's birthday was hot and sunny and since we haven't had rain since April, there was no humidity to worry about and no mosquitos to bother us. He and I walked around the lake in the morning and in the late afternoon, headed for a local brewery we like for artisan beer and cribbage. We are always the oldest couple there by a decade or two but we like it anyway. We picked up some ribs, came home and had a cold beverage on the front hill, watched the sunset, ate dinner and called it a wonderful night.