For nine long months the memory of summer lays its hold upon me. Lolling days of sun. Cares brushed away by gentle zephyrs. Pellucid twilights. Sultry evenings—especially when the window AC unit goes out. Madras and poplin and white after Memorial Day. Specifically, white thighs and calves. There’s cruising the islands: Mykonos, Ibiza, Staten. That night in Monte Carlo? A Chevy Monte Carlo. I didn’t break the bank, but I did back into an ATM machine. What about those merry golf outings? Always bogeyed the eighth hole, the one with the spiral ramp and the windmill. Long walks on the beach. Soft sands, soft promises, and a soft roll of flab spilling over my swim-trunk waistband. Mornings on horseback, or on Lawnboy anyway. The scent of fresh grass clippings. And the smell the electric weed whacker makes when its nylon cord gets snarled. Summer, the fragrant time: flowers, new-mown hay, musk, and whatever else was in that aftershave my high school girlfriend gave me. More long walks on the beach—we never did find the car keys. And, best of all, the famous summer moon. That old lady walking her dog was sure surprised when I stuck my butt out the passenger-side window.
But throw nostalgia aside. Another summer is here. How did a twenty-five-pound dead raccoon get under the cover of the aboveground pool? The living is easy. The charcoal is damp. We’re out of lighter fluid. And we’re going to get this summer off to a great start as soon as we get home from the emergency room and the gasoline blaze in the Weber dies down. Summer is for adventure. Summer is the season of sights and sounds. Did Aerosmith always sound this bad? And what a sight they’re getting to be.
This summer I’m going to do the things I’ve always meant to do. Plant a topiary garden. Learn Italian. Read Middlemarch. Use the nine mandated days of paid vacation before August or lose 60 percent of accumulated holiday time in the subsequent calendar year. And visit my wife’s parents in Des Moines.
I’m going to spend more time with the kids this summer. Like I’ve got a choice. Muffin has to be taken to tennis lessons at 9, swim lessons at 10, tai kwan do lessons at 11, soccer practice at 1, gymnastics at 2, playdate at 3, and a birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in a suburb on the other side of the moon at 4. Don’t let me forget to stop and buy a gift. Also, I’ll have plenty of time with the kids on the way to Des Moines while they spill grape juice, break the Gameboy, and throw up in the SUV. And, by the time we get back … Gosh, where did the summer go?
More to the point, why are we sad when it’s gone? Everybody claims to love this time of the year and yet consider:
Summer school
Summer camp
Summer job
Summer love
Summer rental
Summer reruns
Summer soldiers and sunshine patriots
Summer stock performances of Annie Get Your Gun
As an adjective, “summer” is no compliment. The second-rate, the unimportant, the flimsy, and the stupid predominate from June to September.
Summer is the season of big dumb movies and big dumb books and big dumb me turning crab-boil red at the shore. Nature tricks us with its benign looks, and we wander around outdoors unwary as we’d never be in December. Nobody gets chandelier stroke, coat-and-hat-burn, or cool rash. Summer is when we’re not paying attention. We get confused about things. Daylight savings versus the 401k. You think you’ll retire on a bank account full of extra sunshine after dinner. Temperatures go up, IQs go down. Ghettos do not burn in January and neither do large overfertilized patches of grass in my front yard.
The very bliss adults feel at the advent of summer is half-witted. We’re forgetting that we’re not ten. There comes no lovely day in spring when the doors of America’s businesses fly open and employees rush away singing:
Office is out! Office is out!
Management let the monkeys out!
No more faxes! No more phones!
No more taking laptops home!
And, come autumn, adults do not move to a different and perhaps more interesting cubicle where a new and maybe more lackadaisical quality team supervisor will be in charge. Adult life doesn’t even have a proper summer. It just has a period of hot weather with more houseguests, more houseflies, and no fewer house payments. Summer is a sham. Summer is a hoax. Summer, if we think about it, is …
But let’s stop thinking. It’s summer. There may be nobler times of year, but no one’s made a movie called Endless February. There never was a “Mud Season of Love.” And no pop songs have been written about slush and driveway salt.
Summer isn’t worthwhile. Bless it. The worthwhile things get on our nerves enough the other three-quarters of the annum. Let’s see what Duty looks like in a thong bikini. Let’s find out if Honor can water-ski. Summer is inconsequential. But we know what “take the consequences” means. We don’t get much done in the summer. But what are we, do-gooders? And, if what we do isn’t good, is the world worse off without it? Summer promises us nothing. Couldn’t we all use a little more of that in our lives? Summer makes us act foolish. So? How much fun have you had acting serious?
The major religions of the world do not have their high holy days in summer, for good reason. The Goddess of Winter is stern and self-disciplined. The Goddess of Fall is fruitful and wise. The Goddess of Spring is full of hope. But the Goddess of Summer is … naked, if we can get her to drink two more Mai Tais.
Summer is pointless. That’s the point. Summer is useless. Who wants to feel used? Summer is dumb. And so am I. Looks like one more perfect summer.