BY SHALEEN DESTEFANO
When July settles in, we feel that familiar need to chase the nostalgia of summers past.
The sidewalks are busied with bikes and wagons. Weekend mornings begin at the farmers market with coffee in one hand and oversized pastry in the other. Blankets slowly dot the grass as the day unfolds, and by evening, people linger by Smith Lake just a little longer, to catch the sky melt from blue to pink behind the Front Range.
Summer has a way of reminding us who we are. Or maybe, who we’ve always been underneath all the noise.
There was a time when summer didn’t need a schedule. We’d wake up, pour a bowl of cereal, disappear outside, and return home when the streetlights came on. The moments in between just sort of happened.
We’d hear the unmistakable jingle of the ice cream truck from three blocks away and race barefoot down the sidewalk with a handful of change. We’d spend an hour building dams in the gutter after the sprinkler spilled into the street. Someone always had a basketball, someone always had a bike, and someone inevitably pulled out a deck of Uno cards that somehow turned into the most competitive game of the summer. Hide and Seek and Red Rover were the ultimate test of bravery.
The neighborhood pool was its own little world. Music crackled through the loudspeakers. Lifeguards blew their whistles every few minutes. French fries from the snack bar somehow tasted better than any you’d ever eaten anywhere else. We cannonballed until our fingers wrinkled, laid on blazing concrete until our backs dried, and did it all over again.
Nobody asked, “What should we do today?” Summer always answered that for us. The soundtrack wasn’t a playlist. It was cicadas buzzing in the cottonwoods. Lawn mowers humming somewhere down the block. Sprinklers ticking across thirsty lawns. The screen door slamming every time someone ran inside for another Popsicle.
There were backyard campouts where nobody actually slept because every sound outside the tent had to be investigated. Drive-in movies where half the fun was piling into the car with blankets and snacks. Watching Jaws for the tenth time and somehow convincing yourself there might actually be a shark in the deep end.
And then there was night swimming. Micael Stipe was on to something. To this day, that piano intro can literally transport us back in an instant.
For us, sneaking into the neighborhood pool felt like a rite of passage. Not because we were trying to get away with something, but because floating on your back under a sky full of stars made the whole world feel different. The water was quieter. Time slowed down. Summer felt endless because we weren’t counting the days, we were just living them.
We rode our bikes until our legs ached. Drank from the garden hose. Slept with the windows open because the Colorado air finally cooled after sunset. We chased lightning across the horizon, counted shooting stars from the trampoline, and stayed outside until someone called our name from halfway down the block. Or, in our case, our mom’s infamous whistle would have us running.
We didn’t know we were making the memories we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to recreate. Not because those summers were perfect, but because we were completely inside them. We didn’t yet know how rare that feeling was.
Somewhere along the way, though, we stopped letting moments be enough. Not all at once, but gradually.
Waiting in line became scrolling. Watching a movie became checking a notification. Sitting on the porch became answering one last email. Even a beautiful sunset can become something we experience through a camera before we experience it with our own eyes. Somehow, being still has become uncomfortable. We’ve trained ourselves to fill every quiet moment with something, anything, and in the process we’ve forgotten how to simply sit where we are.
We have confused being busy with being alive. Maybe the strangest part isn’t that we’re distracted. It’s that we’ve started believing every moment should accomplish something. A walk has to count toward our steps. A bike ride becomes a workout. Dinner becomes content. Even a morning at the farmers market quietly turns into another checklist: buy the peaches, grab the flowers, don’t forget the sourdough. We stopped trusting that an ordinary afternoon could be enough on its own.
Kids don’t think that way. They can spend an hour skipping the same rock across the water or trying to perfect the world’s biggest cannonball. They aren’t wondering if it’s productive. They aren’t documenting every second. They’re simply there.
At some point, even rest started to feel like something we had to justify. A slow morning can feel indulgent. A quiet afternoon can feel unfinished. Even sitting still can come with a low whisper of guilt, like we’re falling behind on something we can’t quite name. Maybe that’s what we’ve lost, not our summers, but our ability to surrender to them.
Presence isn’t something we achieve. It’s something we allow. It happens when we stop asking, “What’s next?” long enough to notice what’s already here. The smell of sunscreen. A neighbor watering tomatoes. The laughter drifting across the pool. The breeze through the cottonwoods. Those moments don’t ask us to do anything except pay attention.
People are finding their way back to simplicity. Not because technology is the enemy, but because we’ve realized how easily it replaces attention. Presence, the kind that can’t be multi-tasked. The kind that doesn’t compete. Maybe summer has been trying to teach us that all along.
None of this is groundbreaking. You don’t need another article pressuring you to “be present.” Consider this less of a lecture and more of a friendly nudge from a neighbor who needs the reminder, too.
Let’s wander farmers markets without a grocery list, buy too many Palisade peaches because they’re only perfect for a few short weeks. Bake a pie and leave half of it on a neighbor’s porch. Let’s say yes to one more walk around the park after dinner. One more conversation on the front porch while the sky fades from gold to navy.
Let’s roll the windows down on the drive home, and turn up the volume of that song by The Cars, so that the guy next to you sings along. None of those moments will ever make headlines. They’re just simply the little things that quietly become the big things.
Maybe that’s the gift of summer. Not that it gives us more time, but that it reminds us we were never missing time at all. We were missing our attention. So here’s to pausing the urge to capture life, and instead letting it happen.