summer I am waiting for
On the drive home from work, the deep greens of the roadside ditches are flush with pale orange stars: day lilies, my online search tells me. Herald of summer, perhaps.
As June trickles into July, the trees grow lush, and the days grow long here. The lingering sunshine energizes me, but I miss the quiet light of spring and the cooler morning air. Now I sit on the porch in the evenings and fan myself with my book, sipping desperately at a quickly-condensating1 glass of water. Drinking tea on the porch at 9 AM on the weekend is an exercise in frustration and overheating now; a far cry from the perfect equilibrium of hot-cold I enjoyed in March.
I switch to cold brew with breakfast and eye the ever-encroaching dog days of summer with trepidation.
Despite working a 9 to 5 for almost five years, I still feel the anticipatory build left over from a school-schedule idea of Summer: the speeding slope of May leading up onto the hill of June, over into the crest of July, and down through the denouement of August. And yet, the feeling never falls into line the way I expect it to. Oh, what’s that quote?
I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.
Martha Gellhorn
I’m chasing a shadow in time, I think: something I see before me that remains just out of reach, whether running or walking or standing still. The image of myself cast at the slightest angle ahead of me — like the sense memory of bicycle tires rushing over the pavement in a dizzy spin, reflected in umbra from the evening light; I race to recall what the sun makes of me.
A futile effort. Even if I catch it, I cannot hold it in any way that feels real. So what then? Look for ways to dream new Summers? Wash them from the driveway like chalk, to make room for new marks? I try: read more poetry, ritualize sunscreen layers, sit in the gloaming and watch fireflies wink in staccato.
Does the magic come from the attention I pay, or just from memory itself? I have to ask myself poetically, so it doesn’t feel so pathetic to be longing for a thread of a feeling; a string on the pinky to help me remember that place in time once again.
Good luck out there,
Eve
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Not a word but the correct word will not appease me.↩