I love the summer. Who doesn’t?
Summer, for me, is:
- Waking up without an alarm clock
- Breakfasts on the terrace of our Vilnius house, soaking in the morning sun, watching shining dew on the grass, and listening to the birds’ songs
- The divine smell of fresh strawberries and raspberries
- The scent of my roses
- Long walks in the old town of the city I love with the man I love
- Morning-picked forest chanterelle with new potatoes
- Concerts under the sky
- Ice cream for dinner
- Long weekends in Paris, Florence, or another fancy and beautiful place where history, beauty, fashion, and delicious food comes together for a fantastic getaway trip just for two
- Juicy slices of watermelon
- Scootering instead of driving a car
- Reading books on the grass
This summer is like no other
This summer is like no other. This year’s events taught us to stop and to reevaluate everything. Usually, we spend our summers in our Vilnius house. There was a big chance that it wouldn’t be an available option this year. Yet, we were lucky that after severe COVID-19 first wave outbreaks, Europe and the UAE were experiencing lower rates of infections during the first part of summer, and traveling was resumed so that we could go to our Vilnius home for summer.
It was different with masks, social distancing, temperature checks, and COVID-19 tests. But nothing can take away everything I love about the summer.
Even if we didn’t have summer getaway trip plans and knew we would be lucky just to fly only to Vilnius, I was secretly longing to have an adults-only trip to Paris, London, Milan… as we were used to doing every summer. Llike every mother, I was so tired of homeschooling my kids during distance learning and wanted to have some time just for myself, which is hard to get when you are together every day from morning until night. We could have had such a trip, but the wise voices in our heads have stopped us from doing this. Caution is the parent of safety; therefore, we decided to enjoy all the great pleasures that the Lithuanian summer offers.
I have experienced all the summer delights from my list except the adults’ getaway. But this hasn’t made my summer any less memorable or exciting. I have enjoyed all things under the sun, and now, I am ready to move on and greet the autumn season.
All good things come to an end
I am writing this on the last days of summer. Now, we are safely back in Dubai. The sense of vacation is vanishing, and we are slowly trying to reintroduce standard workday routines. I am preparing for a new school year, filling up the school forms and setting up new learning platforms, buying new school supplies, and hoping that kids will meet their teachers and peers in person after the six-month break. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the kids to have their normal lives back. But just in case, I am trying to prepare myself mentally for another year of homeschooling if the situation worsens, and we need to get back to distance learning.
I hope your summer was a blast, even if it was different than usual. Let’s take time to stop and appreciate even the small things for which we can be grateful.
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” – Dalai Lama
Here are all the little and great pleasures that summer offered me this year captured in my photos, for the love of summer is like no other.
