It was 90 degrees outside today. Summer has finally arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. I miss summer–not the warm weather, but the experience of summer. I remember as a kid thinking summer mornings were the best. I’d wake up early–oddly enough, always earlier than I’d wake up during the school year–with the bedroom feeling moist and cool from having slept with the windows open all night, listening to the birds chatter outside and feeling the day ahead had infinite potential.
Yes, the day would eventually get hot and unpleasant, but during those early, quiet morning hours you just knew the day was going to be awesome.
I also remember the sensation of summer nights when everything came together just right: freshly bathed in newly washed pajamas on fresh, clean sheets, with the cool evening air coming in through the window. That had to be the most perfect sensation ever.
Being an adult in summer is…well, you feel like you’re being mocked constantly. Yes, you still get to experience a little of that early morning feeling, but it’s usually while walking across the parking lot into work. Talk about your bait-n-switch. And that feeling that the day is completely yours to do whatever you want with…gone. Completely gone, never to return. Only by reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine can I even get close, and even that is feeling more and more like a dying Colonel Freeleigh making just one more phone call to listen to the sounds of Mexico City.
I didn’t mean for this to become morose. But let’s face it. As an adult you just can’t experience summer the same way you can as a kid. Nor can you appreciate as a kid that you’ll someday wish you could go back to those carefree summer days when you could just lay in bed between line-dried sheets, smelling the dewy grass outside, and not even think about getting up until you were good and ready.
My favourite memories of summer are when I was in my teens and I had nothing better to do than read all day long. My sister and I would walk to the used book store (when used books were cheap) and we would come out with an armful of great reads for only a couple of dollars. We’d find a nice quiet spot somewhere and read for hours. Sigh! I miss those days. Now summer just means more work because now I have a yard and garden to think about. Wouldn’t it be fun to go back for just one day?
A yard and garden, and a passel o’ kids that seem completely incapable for figuring out things to do! Did we have that problem at tha age? I don’t recall having to go whine to my parents “I’ve got nothing to do!” Probably because my mother would hand me some cleaning supplies and put me to work. 😉