Summer Legs
scrapes, grit, and grace + a little-gy to go with them
Summer Legs
On this particular day, my dear friend Cindy—like an older sister to me—has come along on a morning outing, just for the chance to catch up for twenty short minutes. (A true friend.) Fluorescent store lighting illuminates my toddler, Cal, in his graphic tee, shorts, and Keens—our summer uniform. His legs dangle from the seat of a certain bright red cart.
I watch as Cindy’s eyes catch on something. She chuckles and grabs Cal’s calf. “He’s got Summer Legs,” she says brightly. I look transparently confused. She flashes her signature wholehearted smile and lifts one of his legs for me to see. I notice the bruises and scrapes peppering his knees down to his ankles. I'm momentarily embarrassed by the state of him. But she’s right. His legs are a ledger of summer’s battle wounds: lost fights with shrubs and sidewalks, tumbles near pools and curbs. They show a summer spent outside, embracing all it has to offer. They are, indeed, Summer Legs.
We’ve been out of school for a few weeks now, and we’re doing the dang thing. My kids are climbing trees, splashing in pools, biking to the neighborhood market, over-watering my plants with the hose, and playing backyard baseball until the sun sets. Until I listed it out, I don’t think I realized how beautiful—dare I say idyllic—this summer has already been for my children.
This is, in part, because my summer could be described by a very different list: sibling squabbles, relentless snack assembly, constant packing and unpacking of bags, exorbitant gas charges, and orange peels/cracker crumbs/popsicle sticks scattered all over my floor. There have been moments of deep overwhelm, of internal despair. I find myself collapsing on the couch in mental and/or physical exhaustion all too frequently. The summer angst is settling on me like the July heat.
Summer is a season of intensity: weather, emotions, experiences. Many of our best memories are made in summer precisely because of this. So when you, as an adult, see a child’s legs in the dead of summer—scratched and bruised—you don’t think of the pain it took to get them. You think of the fleeting, exuberant joy of a childhood summer. They’re a nostalgic reminder of days well spent. You smile at Summer Legs—a childhood lived to the full.
I’ve come to realize that I, too, have Summer Legs. Though I should clarify: mine don’t feel like they’ll fade when September hits. Mine feel like they’ve been accumulating for the last six years (and will likely continue until my youngest can wipe himself).
My Summer Legs aren’t just about the extra burdens of the season, but the wear-and-tear of parenting in the little years. Not a mere byproduct of a season of the year, but a season of life. I carry the emotional equivalents of skinned knees, bruised shins, and calf scrapes—more than I can count.
Summer is a season of intensity—and so are the little years. That’s why people look back and remember their toddlers fondly, forgetting the moments they were kicked in the ribs while wrestling a writhing alligator into a diaper. These years bring the hardest mid-mornings, the silliest faces, the best memories, and the dumbest knock-knock jokes I’ve ever heard. There’s so much here to love.
So I’m committing to lean in. I’m embracing the scratches and the scrapes, for the sake of the joy that surrounds them. And I’m holding on to the hope that one day I’ll walk through a Target and see a mom pushing a toddler bedecked in shin bruises and sandals—and I’ll smile, thinking of how I once had Summer Legs.
Little-gy
God made my body, and He calls it good.
He stays with me in every joy and every hurt.
Sometimes big joy comes with big challenges!
Scrapes and bruises are part of growing and learning.
God uses all things to help me know and love Him.