Enjoy Your Labor

Indeed, today I’m doing another batch of salsa – the first batch was so good we finished off 2 pints in 2 days. I also have to find room for 14 pints of tomato sauce already canned and figure out which jars to use for peaches coming in later this week. Oh, and empty the freeze dryers, which are currently filled to the brim with summer squash cut various ways. Thank goodness for holidays, or I’d never get anything done!

As the weekend approached, I asked my children if there was anything they wanted to do with the holiday. An older son went backpacking with some friends, but the rest had no particular plans or ideas. Saturday was a full day of working on things around the house. As the sun went down and I showered, I thought of how through the decades it has always been my job to come up with fun outings, and I had been falling short this summer.

I proposed to the family one at a time that night, “On Monday, what do think of leaving late morning, driving upriver an hour to the Big Slackwater behind Dam No. 4, and swimming in the Potomac?” Four of the children and my wife liked the sound of that, so we walked the towpath along the bank for a mile and half until we found the right spot to hang a 9-yard tow strap from a branch over the river. The hours in the warm green water were a joy watching each one. I thought we would be back before 6:00, but it was well after 8:00 when we arrived home, all of the hours good.

I hope you wrote that down somewhere just as you wrote it here. I am touched