It may be late June, but here in the Midwest it feels like the dog days of mid-August. Heat and humidity offer little encouragement to the June gardens still struggling to take hold.
June is usually a time to welcome the extended days of light while holding prayerful hands and offering encouraging words to newly-planted roots, hoping they’ll sink deep and feel at home. I look closely for the opening of buds and new foliage, before giving them a morning shower. And when the first signs of new growth do appear, I breath a sigh, reassured that their lives have begun to take hold.
But now, delicate green lawns appear to have fast forwarded. Patches of brown have emerged, looking like throw rugs. The butterfly garden lags behind, their blooms struggle to grow taller and to open. The wilting flora is too tired to grow.
When I hear a fellow Midwesterner’s familiar lament about the winter’s endless days, and a predictable vow to move south, I often suggest that it may really be a longing for spring. Perhaps behind their complaint, is an anxious voice anticipating what spring will bring. But what is truly said is that they are eager to rise early with the sun and extend their active hours well into the evening. A Midwesterner may grumble about the present season, feeling stagnate and as if the days are on a looped reel. They long for play.
When I read Grant Faulkner's headline, “It’s Time to Play” found on his Substack, I rubbed my hands, eager at his declaration.
The time is now to begin play.
After a Midwest winter, it seems play becomes permissible at the first sight of a spring thaw, and definitely required when fireflies light up, signaling the start of a summer evening, and when burping tree frogs punctuate the rhythm of the crickets’ chirps. It’s a calling from the natural world to join in, to daydream, as the summer is one long playtime!
In Mercy Town, my new novel, Bean’s older sister, Ret, recalls, when spring is no longer anticipated, but has finally arrived. It’s time for her and Bean to get outside and explore the calling of Mother Nature . . . and to play.
That morning was a day of sure spring because Mom relocated her gardening caddy from its winter parking spot on the shelf in the shed to the front porch. As Bean had said every year when he’d see her with the tool tote in her hand, “It must be time now, huh, Ret?” When I’d tell him, “It is, Bean. Shall we go out and say hello to Mother Earth?” I thought every seam in his clothing would bust from excitement. After being cooped up in winter’s hibernation, he was ready to greet another new life cycle of growing things.
For Bean, frolicking through the woods was play, chasing the unexpected, and discovering something new among the once familiar landscape.
But you don’t have to be a 12 year-old or seek the woods to play.
Brené Brown said, “Play is not just for children. It’s a path to staying alive, awake, and be fully human.”
In his book, Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, author Stuart Brown, says “When adults play, they become better problem-solvers, more creative thinkers, and more resilient humans.”
He says that play is a biological drive, as essential to our well-being as sleep or nutrition. Play is foundational to creativity, emotional health, and resilience.”
Amen to that!
What exactly does it mean, at our adult age, to play?
Playing doesn't come as instinctively as it once did when you were a kid—back when you didn’t even think about it. You just ran outside when your mother yelled, 'Go out and play!'"
Play can be daydreaming, or for us writers, crafting a story. It can be bantering with friends and enjoying belly laughs, or it can be rollicking through the woods. And as Grant Faulkner says, “Playfullness is unplanned, without rules, without limits.” For me, that sounds like the best part! because our days are all about plans, rules and limits.
Play is granting yourself permission to be you; it’s enjoying the person you are.
The pulling out of a garden caddy may have been the signal to Bean that it was time to venture out for play, but us older kids need no signals.
The time to play is now.
And it is with excitement, that my next novel, Mercy Town, is going to print today! Yes, three months before publication day. But who’s counting?!
Preordering is vital to indie authors. Please consider preordering your copy.
A poignant, redemptive tale, Mercy Town reminds us how forgiveness, even in the deepest sorrow, heals wounds, binds us as human beings, and remains truly unconditional.
“The impressive blend of pacing, contemporary issues, and drama transforms Mercy Town into a thought-provoking novel that will appeal to fans of realistic fiction.” —Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review
For more information about this book, please visit nancychadwickauthor.com.
What I’m reading . . .
Between writing novels, I challenged myself with writing short fiction. My first piece, When the Sun Kissed the River, was published, and years later, that story became the inspiration for my subsequent novel, Mercy Town. There’s still much to learn about the art of short story writing, and I do it by reading the best of them of 2024.
Looking forward to Bean and Ret. Good looking cover also!