Out the summer window I spy … a 9-year-old in a tie dye T-shirt, short athletic shorts, tall rubber boots, wearing a baseball mitt. He’s aimlessly stomping his way toward the mailbox. He’s part Christopher Robin and part whimsical fairy child. 

There’s an air peculiar to a child’s walk that I think “aimlessly stomping” sums up. As aimless as a 9-year-old may be at 3 p.m. on a hot summer afternoon, time is indeed marching him toward the definite destination of adulthood. To a more definite point than that as well. 

Out the summer window I spy … a pack of half-naked boys as they tear across the hot lawn into the sparkling mist of a garden sprinkler. I’m reminded of wiener dog races and the ear flopping, tail wagging, tongue lolling joy of competition and fraternity.  

Out the summer window I spy… a sunburnt, dark-eyed boy scrounging around the yard in pursuit of hidden insects. There’s a wake of upturned stones behind him and his dirty fingers scrape and dig as efficiently as a wild boar’s rooting. He’s discovered glimpses of a hidden world. One crawling with infinite legs and beheld in the infinite eyes of a limitless number of creatures. A distorted but instructive reflection of a larger world still hidden to him in plain sight. 

Out the summer window I spy … a shock of blond hair glinting in the high morning sun. A happy 3-year-old, pink-faced in the Sahara Desert of his sandbox and exuding contentment. The still air echoes with his tiny voice as he drives a small yellow bulldozer and narrates the scene. Nothing else matters to him. Nothing else exists. 

Out the summer window I spy … blue eyes too intense for a 7-year-old. They’re focused on a white wiffle ball that he tosses to himself, over and over and over. Each time he swings the thin yellow bat he cracks a backyard home run. He talks to himself and exalts in each triumph. As real as the bat he’s holding. 

Out the summer window I spy … a shaggy-haired 10-year-old boy pedaling a tall bicycle through the street. Or pushing a red lawn mower through thick green grass. Or running down the beach and crashing into the water. He’s a boy, yet his lineaments begin to belie a future young man. But his smile at the beach is still pure, unreserved childhood. The kind rarely seen in photographs. 

Out the summer window I spy … another boy. More distant yet more familiar. He’s laughing in the glow of a flashlight illuminating a boyhood campout in a backyard tent. Or he’s jumping into a crystal clear swimming pool without testing the water. Or he’s racing down the sidewalk barefoot with his siblings as the Fourth of July bursts in technicolor overhead. 

Ah, there he is again, walking away from the snowball stand with a stained mouth and half of a styrofoam cup of blue bubble gum snowcone in his hand. He looks happy. 

But that boy’s not out the window is he? No. He’s looking out the window. And he knows this isn’t his summer anymore. It’s a window of their summer, but it’s closed from his side. Summer doesn’t last all year, and July is only a stage of life. 

Out the summer window I spy….a spectacular and radiant golden sunrise. I hear a man quietly say, “Goodbye, summer.” Then he opens the window, smiles, and says to six pairs of eager eyes, “Boys, it’s the first day of summer!” 

“Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace:

From my heart I give thee joy —

I was once a barefoot boy!”

Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their six sons. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.