A salute to summer

For someone who’s always loved school, attended school for what feels like forever, parents children who are in school, is married to a middle school teacher, and also teaches at a college, a school schedule is ingrained.

There’s an innate rhythm that I’m attuned to at a molecular level. The small part of anxiety, but mostly excitement at the beginning of the year, the four week stretch when especially the college students all get sick from not taking care of themselves and, as my mother would say, burning the candle at both ends. I observe frenetic relationships and friendships, some that stay for years or decades, and many that burn out quickly. Loads of activities, some that are fun, and some that are a chore. Breaks and managing trips or visits home with friends or possible significant others, frantic grading, pleading, promising to do better next semester and the joyful rest of winter break and the Christmas and New Year reset. The winter term is more serious and the dark cold weather enacts a price. The stretch to March and spring break seems endless, but optimism remains, even if a little less shiny than the early weeks of the fall semester. After more planning and execution of fun trips or service projects or time back home and catching up on work and homework, it’s a sprint to the finish line. We are all tired of studying and grading, of reading, of obligations by the spring. Some rise to the occasion and finish with style. Others limp across the finish line. A few more days of light agony, tethered to my computer and managing the last minute late work, pleas, conundrums, and grading, before I jettison my laptop for the first blissful weeks of possibility. What will I do with my summer, I wonder? I know that I will present at a conference, work on another project or two, and teach classes online. Not so different from my normal school year. But late May feels full of possibility and freedom, even if the reality isn’t much different than the school year.

I call her, “summer Rebecca,” this interloper and secondary personality. She does the same work of parenting, socializing, entertaining, cooking, baking, reading, working on projects at home and at work, grading, responding, presenting and prepping. But something is a bit different about her. She is not stressed. She gets things done, but at a slower pace. She has time to enjoy a cup of tea on her front porch with a book in the morning and time for a back porch book club with her girls in the afternoon. I like summer Rebecca, but maybe it’s because she’s only around for a small part of the year.

For the last few weeks of summer, an ode to my front porch:

The whisper of a page turning in my book. Sturdy shoes on concrete steps, then the squeak of the letter box opening. Paper slides in with a thump, followed by another squeak and metallic clunk of the closing letterbox. The sturdy shoes retreat: step down, once, twice, and onto the long lush grass. There’s a murmur of conversation and dramatic hand gestures that grow in volume as pedestrians pass. “But SHE texted me…. And then HE SAID…how did he know….why did he…?” and then a diminuendo as the footsteps, angst, and conversation recedes. A burst of girlish shrieking, full of glee from the nearby swing set, and an irritated rebuttal with long drawn out and sisterly disapproving syllables: FLOoooo RA! The neighbor girl speaking excitedly, a robin triumphantly chirps, for there is a juicy worm. A car driving too fast. A car driving too slow (and probably rubber-necking…hello to you too, sir…or, as my dad used to say…take a GOOD LOOK). A bicycle brake squeaks, and a skateboard clinks over the seams of the clean and regularly scrubbed streets. A roar from a single engine plane, maybe from the 1940s? and then a decrescendo of spinning grinds to a halt. Ding! The wash cycle ceases with a muted sigh from the basement. The quiet clink of a sweaty gin and tonic glass as I set it down on a WWI poster ceramic coaster.

Summer, we salute you.


Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch on Unsplash