Since the time that I was old enough to swing a hammer, I have spent part of almost every summer working on the docks at our family cottage on Georgian Bay in central Ontario. We have torn them down, built them up and torn them down again. Over the years I graduated from gopher to crew chief but nothing much has really changed. We still reuse every nail, trim the rot and hammer back tried and true boards, and spend hours arguing about what the best way is to level a certain stretch that will never really be straight.
The one constant on our docks, as they have grown and shrunk and been drowned and then left high and dry by changing water levels, has been a sign painted by my grandfather in the 1940s and touched up annually ever since. It reads simply, “Slow down, please”.
Now the intended audience for this message is the boaters who race passed our dock and whose wake does on-going damage to every log, board and spike (not to mention banging our own boats constantly on the sides). But it has occurred to me that maybe, all of these years, we have been pointing the sign in the wrong direction!
For decades, as a teacher, administrator and parent, the frenetic pace of the school year has been replaced by an equally manic need to cram every possible bit of activity into summer vacation. Part of this has been growing up in a climate where July and August were like a fine late spring day in Bermuda and the rest of the year struggled to keep up. Part of it has been a product of living in a fast paced urban environment in which relaxing meant wasting “valuable” time.
This summer will be different. Oh, I will still be swinging the hammer, straightening nails and sawing boards – but I know already that my pace will have changed. I am going to take my grandfather’s advice to passing boaters, and slow down. I have young children and grandchildren to play with and enjoy, sand castles to build, rocks to skip, fish to catch, books to read and batteries to recharge.
Now the intended audience for this message is the boaters who race passed our dock and whose wake does on-going damage to every log, board and spike (not to mention banging our own boats constantly on the sides). But it has occurred to me that maybe, all of these years, we have been pointing the sign in the wrong direction!
For decades, as a teacher, administrator and parent, the frenetic pace of the school year has been replaced by an equally manic need to cram every possible bit of activity into summer vacation. Part of this has been growing up in a climate where July and August were like a fine late spring day in Bermuda and the rest of the year struggled to keep up. Part of it has been a product of living in a fast paced urban environment in which relaxing meant wasting “valuable” time.
This summer will be different. Oh, I will still be swinging the hammer, straightening nails and sawing boards – but I know already that my pace will have changed. I am going to take my grandfather’s advice to passing boaters, and slow down. I have young children and grandchildren to play with and enjoy, sand castles to build, rocks to skip, fish to catch, books to read and batteries to recharge.
So don't bother trying to get me to ramp things up and to cram in more than is humanly possible into a few short weeks. If you want to spend time with me, I'll be down at the dock leaning up against my grandfather's sign!
No comments:
Post a Comment