“No price is set on the lavish summer;

June may be had by the poorest comer.”

—James Russell Lowell, “The Vision of Sir Launfal”

Spent the weekend on the beach with my wonderful husband celebrating our 24^th anniversary (very belatedly—our actual anniversary is in January!). I’m a little sunburned, despite sunscreen and shade, but more relaxed than when we left. It was such a pleasure to be away from responsibility and to-do lists, to be with each other with only fun on the agenda. We walked on the beach, swam, did a lot of reading and poked around in some antiques stores and a flea market. I even did a little sketching:

Our room:

When I turned my wall calendar page to June this morning, I found a list of 2012 international holidays stapled inside. I was about to toss it, when I stopped to take a look. Along with the more traditional holidays like Christmas, New Year’s and various independence days, other countries celebrate some memorable and colorful holidays such as:

Picnic Day (Australia—Aug. 6) 

Tomb-Sweeping Day (China and Hong Kong—Apr. 4) 

Day of Goodwill (South Africa—Dec. 26) 

Waitangi Day (New Zealand—Feb. 6) 

Coming of Age Day, Children’s Day, Respect for the Aged Day (Japan—Jan. 9, May 5 and Sept. 1, respectively)    

Not to brag or anything, but we here in the U.S. have quite the array of holidays and  “National Month/Day of” designations ourselves. For example, in addition to the well-known Father’s Day and Flag Day, June contains some of most lighthearted and silly of these.  How about Chimborazo Day (June 3)—celebrating an inactive volcano that is supposedly the point on Earth that is closest to the Moon and farthest from the Earth’s center? Food lovers celebrate National Cheese Day (June 4), National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (June 7), Iced Tea Day (June 10), Corn on the Cob Day (June 11), National Fudge Day (June 16) and National Bomb Pop Day (June 28)—among others!

To work off all that ice cream and cheese, you can get outside for National Trails Day (June 2), National Running Day (June 6—also National Yo-Yo Day) or Go Fly a Kite Day (June 5).

Other days of note: Weed your Garden Day (June 13), World Juggling Day (June 16), Eat Your Vegetables Day (June 17), Take Your Dog to Work Day (June 22), Camera Day (June 29), and Meteor Day (June 30).

And, of course, there’s always Donald Duck’s birthday. Mr. Duck made his first appearance in the cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” on June 9, 1934. Happy 78^th birthday, D.D.!

Believe it or not, these are just a few of the days in June with official celebrations! Click here for a more complete listing.

What do you want to celebrate today? Me, I’m celebrating National Doughnut Day—meet me at Krispy Kreme for a free doughnut!

Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don’t need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Garden Buddha

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,   

prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.   

Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,   

he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always   

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.   

Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness?   

The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,   

filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia   

and yearning.  He’s laughing at me, isn’t he?   

The seasons wheeling despite my photographs   

and notes, my desire to make them pause.   

Is that the lesson?  That stasis, this holding on,   

is not life?  Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,   

its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;   

the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers   

exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.   

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Peter Pereira. Reprinted from What’s Written on the Body by Peter Pereira, Copper Canyon Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

My mind seizes the opportunity to highlight whatever flaws and character defects it wants me to know about, thrusting them up for consideration. I think of three more things, minor but necessary, that I will add to the to-do list for the week. I feel overwhelmed by how long that list is growing. Soon I’m having a full-blown anxiety attack and all hope for immediate sleep has fled. I know that I lead a richly blessed life—that I am not in need in any real way. But tell that to my mind at 2 a.m.

I repair to the guest room where I turn the TV on low, just loud enough that I can barely hear it. I find this soothing. Eventually I fall asleep, only to be woken at 4:18 a.m. by my son’s alarm clock, the aptly-named Sonic Bomb. I storm into his room, which adjoins the guest room, and change the time on his alarm to a more reasonable hour, muttering imprecations (Why was the alarm set for 4:18 in the first place? Inquiring minds still want to know.) However, he hit the snooze button at 4:18, instead of turning off the alarm, so it goes off again at 4:28.  This time, the dog, who sleeps with him, decides she requires a bathroom break.

By now, it’s getting dangerously close to the time my own alarm clock is set for. Should I try to get a little more sleep? Do I need the TV again? Mmm, this bed is pretty comfortable...

Wait—is that my husband getting his coffee in the kitchen?

Nuts.

What do you do at 2 a.m.?

I’ll tell you how I’m doing…what was my word of the year again?

Yup. Haven’t paid one bit of attention to the concept after the initial excitement of choosing the word. Am I afraid of it? Unsure where to start? Too busy with daily life to ponder what passion means to me and how to get more of it in my life? Probably a little of all those things. I’ve done a few things that I feel passionate about—rode and played with Tank, traveled, took an art class—but I haven’t connected passion with any of those things.  I haven’t let it motivate me or keep me going when I wanted to quit. I haven’t allowed it to flow through me the way I wanted to.

So. What now? Well, I have half a year left—I mean to make the most of it. I’ll start asking myself what I feel passion for, or even how I can ignite passion about some of my less-exciting everyday activities. With a little more thoughtfulness and imagination, the second half of 2012 may turn out to be more exciting (in a good way) than the first half. That’s one of the beauties of life: every day you can start over, take one more baby step towards the life you want to lead.

If you chose a word of the year, how has it influenced you so far? And if you didn't, has your year seemed to have any kind of theme?

“Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

— Jane Austen, Emma