Solstice by Keith Fynaardt
By the time summer begins, its longest day is already spent. All spring long, plans for the unhurried weeks of June and July unrolled in the imagination: the stack of summer reading, trips to lakes and parks, the concerts, the projects in the garage, to fit once more into a favorite pair of shorts, or catch the perfect walleye. In spring, summer is full of possibility. Then suddenly the Fourth is just a week away, and it seems as though fall is already in view and prospects diminished.
Late June calms the winds of northwest Iowa—more calm at least, by the standards of northwest Iowa’s winds. Most of May (with the exception of a few gorgeous days of flowers) was spent with half an ear to the radio at suppertime, hoping that dark clouds and gusts of cold air under hot, humid layers meant rain only—that the tail-hooks of supercells would remain aloft, that a huddle around the radar wouldn’t break with a dash to the basement, clutching a flashlight and a photo album.
No, this morning, even as the heat rises, some sense of experience foretells a peaceful day, a day no one will mention the Fujita scale and no one will worry that a whirlwind might drop from the sky and lift a little town away.
The Labradors awake with an itch to dig and chase—to find some woodlot scent and run it down. Fledgling starlings and robins, raucous and insatiable, plunge from nests in the spruces headlong and bumbling in a youthful impudence as if they think they can fly. And some do.
Rabbits, well into the second litter (or is it the third?) stop at nothing to eat the last of the garden lettuce. Heavy plastic netting is nibbled right through; next year it must be wire. Swallows glow blue-purple-golden in winking angles in and out of the barn. They’ll fly a hundred miles by the time I finish breakfast, driven by young whose calls define twittering, the urgent sound we know by heart.
At the farmer’s market, better gardeners who understand the capacities of rabbits display a hard-won feast. Vegetables are precious yet. No anonymous benefactor will leave even a zucchini on the stoop in June. And a tomato? It wouldn’t be shared with a spouse.
Early sweet corn makes its own rules: A grandmother will cut in line and brazenly buy as much as she can stuff in her basket—even if it’s all that’s left, even if members of her own Bible study are in line behind her. I pick up lettuce to replace what was lost to the rabbits, and on the way home notice the leaves on the Norway maples have grown as large as a Dutchman’s hand from so much spring rain.
After lunch the day slips into drive: An old softball glove needs to be found for an afternoon game, and supplies for an evening bonfire must be gathered.
The search for the glove under a load of miscellaneous sports stuff in the basement turns up a collection of equipment as mysterious as if it were someone else’s closet. Whose cleats are these? Why do we own brand-new tennis rackets? Have we ever played badminton? Where did this croquet set come from? A storeroom of summer ambition.
Our church league slow-pitch team is no powerhouse. In fact, some years we’ve failed to field a team. When we arrive, we’re met with tolerance—it’s church league, after all—but the established teams seem to regard us as batting practice. We’re not above bringing on an occasional college ringer, but we’re still no threat to teams with uniforms, hand signals and rosters where surnames have remained unchanged for four generations.
The chests and shoulders of our opponents make them look like hitters, which they are. It’s not hard to imagine one of them in his 60s, even, whacking a tall fly out over the power lines above the centerfield fence and into a thigh-high cornfield.
We’re respectable for at least three-and-a-half innings. After that no one pays attention, but it’s enough time for someone unexpected to catch a deep shot to right field, on the run, over his shoulder. He won’t forget it.
Fireflies emerge from the darkening grass, cicadas screech, and gravel clatters as players and family-fans head home. In the woods behind the house, a fire burns in a circle of stones. As sticks are sharpened for marshmallows and lanterns hung in the branches, no one notices the clouds roll up until the first urgent crack of thunder.
The wind arrives, and in the rush to secure the ice chests, lawn chairs and blankets—even as the heavy drops hiss onto the stones—a teenager leaps clear over the flames. The thunder cracks again, but in a warm rumbling way that signals rain and eases fear. Electric excitement pushes us onto the porch, where we spread out picnic-style with damp hair and wet dogs and eat chocolate bars and marshmallows as the rain brightens the rocks and darkens the grass, and the trees and corn lay open their leaves to drink.
As the rain subsides, mosquitoes begin to invade our refuge, but not before a nine-year-old boy, chin-deep in a bowl of strawberries and ice cream, says suddenly, his mouth half full, “This is the best part of the best part.”
Next April, a hazy memory of that moment will again spark the possibilities of summer—when the solstice offers time to stand still, pay attention, and maybe find some fulfillment of what was anticipated, maybe live a little of what was imagined. 
Raised on a family farm in southern Iowa, Keith Fynaardt is restoring an abandoned Sioux County farm place so his sons can grow up the way he did: with animals, chores and places that feed one’s imagination. A literature and writing professor at Northwestern, he encourages his students—even as they explore the world—to discover home as well.