We northerners will come to the end of the sky road next Monday, June 21. The sun will have reached a certain telephone pole I see  from my kitchen window. From that point, it’s all downhill to the winter solstice.

The sunny news is that our star’s retreat goes in baby steps. I can handle one minute less of sun each day. It is decidedly best not to think of Shakespeare’s lines from Macbeth…

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time…

No, the proper course of action is to focus on getting the most out of each precious summer day. Each one of us defines “most” differently.  In our case,  eating every possible meal out of doors is high on the list as is taking daily beach walks. Getting out on the water is paramount as well. We are aiming for lots of canoe time and hope that most of it is spent in the boat. Our canoeing skills are not finely honed.

Every summer should also include some serious sand castle building. In addition, we are considering branching out into large beach sculpture . On a recent beach walk, we chanced on a wonderful assemblage constructed by an unknown beachcomber.  The temporal nature of this art form  appeals to us, and we are eager  to erect a fleeting landmark of our own.

Time will be made for summer indulgences such as fireworks, ice cream, blueberries, sunset watching, art fairs, road trips and Riesling. Summer is a siren, and we are not about to resist her call.

What are your summer joys?

My husband and I recently had the good fortune to be driving down Clark Street in Chicago just as a Cub’s game ended. Thousands of fans poured out of Wrigley Field spilling across the sidewalks into the street. I know nothing about baseball, but I do recognize a happy wave of humanity when I’m engulfed by it. The bars lining Clark all had their doors wide open. The night was warm, life was good and about to get better. We didn’t mind being slowed down by this joyful throng.

Logically, Cubs’ fans have scant reason to celebrate. Their team has not won a pennant for 102 years. The Cubs also have the unenviable distinction of enjoying the longest drought in American sport history….that includes the NFL, NBA and NHL.

Their home rises out of its city neighborhood, Wrigleyville,  like a beached whale. In fact, the field was built in 1914 for a team called the Chicago Whales. The Cubs have been playing in “The Friendly Confines” since 1916.

At the current time our country is awash in rancor and disillusionment. I believe Americans could learn some valuable lessons from Cubbies fans; such as, you don’t always have to be first to be happy. You don’t even have to win very  much to be happy. Longing for the dream is almost as good as having it come true. Patience is still a virtue.

The day after our Cub encounter, we were talking with friends from Chicago. “Did the Cubs win yesterday?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” was the reply.

The quest goes on.

Sometimes a gift isn’t. The most spectacular gift of this sort we ever received was a Volkswagen, one of the original ones.

My father-in-law, a mechanic, called from Arizona and told us he had restored a car for our teenage son. The car was a deal from some obscure third cousin in California. All we had to do was fly out from the Midwest and drive the VW home. My husband and son embarked with happy thoughts of their road trip home.

Thirty miles out of Tucson, a stop for a quart of oil was necessary. One hundred miles out of Tucson, a new passenger, a case of oil, was riding in the back seat. 2,100 miles later, my husband walked in our door and ruefully told me, “We can’t afford this car, and we can’t sell a gift.”

With regular fill-ups of cash, we managed to keep our son’s gift moving.

Then the situation took a more serious financial turn south. Our daughter was away at school but commuted forty miles from her apartment to the campus. (Don’t even ask why: love was involved.) She called to say that her junker car had broken down, and, since there is no public transportation in rural Wisconsin, immediate help was needed. We told her brother he would have to give his car, the gift from his grandfather, to Sis. He rose to the family emergency with total grace, and thus became carless. But not for long. Moved by his instant generosity, we bought him a small pick up truck so he, too, could get to school and work.

The VW was now 300 miles away from home in one of the coldest parts of the state. Despite the fact that the car had a beer tapper in place of a gear-shift knob, it did not enjoy living in the land of Leinenkugel beer. My husband soon became a telephone buddy with a very lucky mechanic in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Three months before our daughter’s graduation, our little gift drove its last mile, causing us to lease a brand new car to get child #1 to the finish line.

Some families celebrate graduations. We celebrated our daughter’s move to Manhattan. Surely, no car would be necessary there.

For some unknown reason, this is not the only VW story in the Tooley family.We all seem to have some serious Volkswagen karma. I understand that our children’s generation is overwhelmed with school, work and parenting responsibilities. But I do hope that in good time they will add their own adventures to the Tooley VW chronicles.

Click here to learn more about these little jewels.

“If I said, ‘You’re looking gaudy today’, what would I mean?”

Many eager young hands in the classroom shot up. No one, however, knew the definition of the word.

“Let me explain it this way,” I said. “If you come to school with plaid pants, a Hawaiian shirt and every piece of jewelry you own, you would be gaudy.”

My purpose was not only to teach a wonderful vocabulary word, but also to begin an art lesson on Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), the world famous Barcelona architect whose imaginative, flamboyant and lavishly embellished buildings led people to coin the word “gaudy”.

Gaudi’s style was unique and has put Barcelona on the map as an architectural wonderland. At the Casa Batllo, Gaudi designed the roof to look like the back of a dragon. He covered the facade of the house with a mosaic of ceramic pieces and crystal. Casa Milà or La Pedrera is a gigantic apartment building with undulating walls like a mammoth snake weaving around an entire city block. Gaudi’s design for Park Güell is filled with magical walkways, pavilions, serpentine benches and seductive spaces. His masterpiece is Sagrada Familia, a soaring Cathedral whose exterior walls are dripping with carvings of birds, plants, animals and religious scenes. This amazing building was begun in 1884 and is not yet complete. Swarms of craftsmen work daily in the scaffolded interior.

The children loved Gaudi’s exotic, colorful architecture. Their assignment was to draw a gaudy house and decorate it with mosaics as Gaudi often did. Every class, kindergarten to fourth grade, was encouraged to let imagination run rampant.

I came back several weeks later to see the finished artwork. I was amazed. Here is a sampling of the children’s work… every piece is gloriously gaudy. I’ve included a few real Gaudis, too.

I am a believer in silence and its soulmate, solitude. That doesn’t mean that I can’t give Chatty Cathy a run for her money. And it certainly doesn’t  imply I don’t love being with friends and family. But I do believe that I could never get a creative thought in my head again without quiet times.

Silence is not an American value. I recently pulled into a gas station with a friend who doesn’t drive. She began laughing hysterically when I lifted the nozzle and the gas pump started to talk to me; first a sales pitch and then blaring music.

“Has it come to this?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “and I can’t even shut this pump up. Some,” I informed her, “have a mute switch.”

As much as I dislike constant noise, I am highly suspicious of those who take a vow of silence for whatever reason. Since peacefully communicating with our fellow beings on the planet is the hardest thing any of us attempt, not speaking doesn’t seem particularly virtuous to me. Even the Old Testament admonishes that there is “a time to keep silent and a time to speak.”

In the course of my work, I drive many hundreds of miles each week. I’ve been asked if this isn’t boring. On the contrary, I see it as luxurious quiet time. I’m quite comfortable with what’s going on in my head. For many years, I didn’t even have a car radio.

Besides, silence really isn’t quiet. Unless you are some place like the moon or the Atacama Desert, silence just makes the small sounds noticeable. Bird singing, insects serenading, cats purring, waves lapping, raindrops falling and coffee dripping down all jump in to fill the void.

Silence isn’t golden; it’s not even silver. But interludes of silence would appear to be a catalyst for having a life of the mind.

The French essayist, Jean de La Bruyere, gets the last word. He said, “It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgement to be silent.”