Summer’s sun stretches her gold-plated rays down from the baby blue sky and through the maze of leaves landing on the fading green blades of grass in seemingly each yard I pass by. I drive through our neighborhood squinting from time to time as those rays sometimes find their way through the windshield. During the three or four minutes it takes to make the drive from the turnoff into our neighborhood to our driveway I pass three or four dozen houses on both sides of the street. Occasionally, a sprinkler will spew water skyward then down in a rhythmic pattern across a yard as I drive by, a synchronized sport, of sorts, for the weary. Now and then, someone will be in a yard riding or pushing a lawnmower trimming the excess grass the ground has yielded since the last mowing time. Mostly though as I pass through the neighborhood, I notice most of the yards are empty.
It is summer and no one is outside.
That realization makes me a bit sad. Back in my day, summer was so much fun. Before I begin to reminisce on summer days back on red clay Georgia hills now faded into a monochrome memory I stop myself from going down that road. Maybe I am too nostalgic for my own good. Maybe I was bitten by some bug a long time ago that somehow idealizes times and places as more special than their worth to others. After all, rehashing old memories only seems to reinforce what I want to believe and while some who shared similar experiences might enjoy that trip it only seems to alienate those who can’t relate. To them I imagine they see those with other memories and experiences as out of touch with how things really are now or how they seem to really be to them. Two types of people, two types of thinking, yet more similar in how they view things than either type would ever admit. Still, the realization that summer is here and no one is outside sinks in and I can’t help but wonder why nowadays we seem to abandon summer when it finally comes.
I rarely see a natural tan anymore, one so deeply bronze I can’t help but speculate when I see one just how many hours the person wearing it has spent outdoors. No one chases and catches bugs anymore; the kind of bugs only seen in the summer, funny-shaped bugs, speckled with vivid vivacious colors and with weird antennas and more legs and wings than it seems they can easily manage. Wide, sprawling yards no longer seem to have a home plate at the edge of the walkway with first base being a rock by the driveway, second base being a shrub with funny smelling leaves at the yard’s center and third base being a tree near the edge of the woods anymore. Folks no longer go barefoot outside for any length of time other than maybe to step outside onto the front steps to briefly speak to a neighbor, and then only if they can’t find their flip-flops or house shoes, so when they do go shoeless the bottom of their feet is so tender they come hopping back into the house vowing to never step outside the house again without some form of shoe.
Yet I know, too much sun is not good for you, and neither is extreme heat. And I know some people weird out over the sight of bugs of any kind. And I know baseball can be a tedious and hot sport to play in the summer and besides someone might drop a bat on their knee and get hurt. And I know the risk of stepping on something that might really hurt is a legitimate concern, splinters and bee stings are never pleasant.
So, nowadays we flip on the TV and watch a mind-rotting “reality” show because we have hundreds of channels to choose from even if there’s still nothing worthwhile to watch. Or we open up a laptop and stick our nose there and whittle away time as if this is what we were made to do. Or we sit anxiously beside a cell phone or some other electronic device with some cool exotic name waiting for a response from a text message we sent only a minute ago frozen at the thought of doing anything else until we get a response and slowly freaking out when the response doesn’t seem to come quick enough. Or we listen to the drone of the air conditioner pumping cool air into each room of the house as it fights off any heat which may try to come into the house and wilt us into a puddle of goo while all along a voice inside us faintly contemplates why life is passing us by so quickly.
And I know the inevitability of things. I know how change comes with the passing of time. I know how every generation has to do it’s own thing and learn it’s own lessons. Seasons come, seasons go. Time marches on. Clichés become clichés because some truth rings through them.
Still, it’s summer. We’ve shaken off the chill-lined gray clouds of winter. We’ve left behind those short days of daylight where we longed for a warmer time and a sunnier day. And we got what we wished for. Isn’t this what you hoped for on December 28 when the cold rain saturated your shoes and made your feet feel like blocks of ice? Wasn’t this what you hoped for on February 2 when you mumbled and grumbled how you hoped a groundhog predicted the weather better than the professional weathermen on TV as you, without gloves, scraped a thin layer of ice from your windshield? Wasn’t it on March 11, as you dug your winter coat out of the closet again, that you imagined red Kool-Aid and fireworks and June bugs and swimming and an Independence Day picnic with hot dogs and cold watermelon? Wasn’t it then you remembered that summer days had just enough sunlight for you to do all you wanted to do in a day before darkness came for an overnight stay? Wasn’t it then that you recalled the summer sky at dusk changing colors from blue to purple to black with silver stars overhead winking at you like a shameless flirt? Shouldn’t now be the time to loosen up some? Shouldn’t it be the time to look caution square in the eye and say, take the rest of the summer off, I’ll see you in the fall? And then shouldn’t it be the time that, being the rebel you are at heart, you actually walk to the mailbox without any shoes on your feet?
My drive through the neighborhood ends as I pull my car into our driveway and then into the garage. As I unload my work gear from the day, the garage door closes behind me and I feel that crush of cool air from the air conditioning seeping into my skin like some indispensable injection intended to slow me down and keep me off my feet for awhile. Once inside the house, I locate the laptop and turn it on. Before getting cozy, I search and seize the remote control hitting the power button to open up another world; a world distant yet not quite real and just removed enough from the real life I know that I keep going back to it. Finally, I place my cell phone on the arm of the chair and make sure the ringer is turned on just in case someone tries to reach me. As the laptop boots up I flip through the onscreen guide on the TV in hopes of finding something to run harmlessly in the background so as to not distract me enough to stop me from what I am doing. Now and then, I glance at my cell phone as if my looking at it will reassure it, but more likely to reassure myself, that I am here if needed. And just before all these things come together to form the rest of the day, I can’t help but wonder why we really don’t make of summers what we used to…
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