Shades of summer

Summer has arrived in our area. Most of this week has been in the 80’s or 90’s. I’m not entirely happy about that. It makes my drive home feel even longer when my AC can’t quite keep up. But mornings and evenings… ahhhh……

Somewhere around 8:30 or so when the kids have gone to bed I step outside with the dog for a moment, and while the dog does his thing I sit on the steps and drink in the air, which has grown deliciously cool in the previous couple of hours. The greenery in the yard adds its own wet, earthy, flowery scent, and everything is calm. The cement step is slightly chilly beneath me as I sit with my back against the door, waiting for the dog to complete his rounds.

Under the heat of the day it’s easy to forget that it could ever be cool again. When we walk the dog only an hour or two earlier it’s still quite warm out. And yet the minute the sun goes down the heat disperses like naughty children when their parent’s glance has turned elsewhere, and earth sighs.

I’m not a fan of summer, but there is still something to love. One cannot truly appreciate those in-between times without the extremes of heat and cold the rest of the year brings. During summer there’s a daily reminder that trials do not last forever, and consolation is waiting.

It’s amazing, really. Science tells us that the Earth is perfectly positioned in the solar system. A little closer to the sun and we’d become a desert. A little farther away and we’d be an ice ball. And nestled within that narrow range we find humanity, only able to live unaided within a temperature band of a few hundred degrees. Even narrower is the range in which I feel truly comfortable.

No wonder I enjoy those few minutes so much. The entire solar system comes together in that moment just for me.