the beginning of the end
there's 104 days of summer vacation
The solstice is technically the beginning of summer but it always feels like an end to me. The longest day of the year means that every subsequent day will be shorter. Summer has hardly begun, I know this to be true, and yet the long days for which it is famous are already shortening. It’s hard not to feel the urgency of the days slipping away when night comes earlier and earlier each time.
It’s the feeling of filling your car with gas when the needle rests just past the F indicating a fuller than full tank, and you feel like you could drive to infinity. Summer before the solstice exists on stolen time before the calendar catches up to what we already know. When the needle hits the F, when the solstice officially marks the change from one season to the next, the indefinite becomes definite. The gas tank will empty, and so too, will the summer.
The kids in my neighborhood have only just aligned their schedules. First, the college kids arrived home, having finished their semester. Then the private school kids stopped walking home from their campus down the street. Then the busses stopped coming from the public schools. The youth are all in agreement: summer is here. And yet I still can’t help but feel like I’m about to miss it. I feel the heat slipping through my fingers like the frigid water of the lake I haven’t yet had the chance to visit. The Great Lake that hasn’t even warmed up enough for comfortable swimming yet, and won’t for at least another month. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, summer’s demise feels immediate, hovering just on the horizon.
The moment summer starts, I am worried about its end. About failing to make the most of the fleeting heat, the growing season, the long days that melt into somehow longer nights. No season makes me more sure or afraid of the end. Fall slides into winter without notice, and winter seems permanent until it isn’t. I’ve learned better than to believe the tease of warmth in the dead of winter, the ‘January thaw,’ as my grandpa calls it. February always does whatever it wants, which is never what I want it to. Even spring, once it starts, seems like it may never give way to warmer days, remaining 50 degrees and rainy forever.
But summer, once it starts, awakens a desperation deep within me. The desperation never fully goes dormant, though it understands that winter cannot give it what it needs. Each summer sunset brings with it the regret of not spending every hour frying in its light when it was at its strongest. Even as the temperatures rise and the direct sunlight of the afternoon and evening warms my living room beyond the point of comfort, I can’t bring myself to close the blinds even a little, letting the greenhouse effect of my front windows battle my air conditioner for the sake of a little more light. Even as the sun starts to set, and I become aware that neighbors can see me inside my house more clearly than I can see them on the sidewalk, the curtains stay open until the last dregs of sunlight have disappeared, and I mourn them no matter how much time we had together.
In winter, it feels almost easier to say goodbye. Like the less time I spend in its light, the less time I have to grow attached to the sun. In the summer, despite my countless precautions against its burn, despite the damage it’s caused me year after year, I can’t stop letting it in.
Summer was never my favorite season, even as a kid. It was always too hot, too sticky, and I was always too pale, too sweaty. None of these things have changed and yet I fear the end in a way I never used to. Now, when summer gives way to fall and nothing in my life changes in a noticeable or concrete way, I spend so long afraid of the end that I almost miss the middle. Maybe if I didn’t spend the whole season fearing its inevitable end, I would have time to actually enjoy it. Maybe if I didn’t spend my whole life fearing one thing or another, I would have time to actually enjoy it. Or maybe that’s the way things are designed to be.
I had a completely different newsletter planned for today, but then realized that it would be going out on the solstice and I had a few thoughts about that to share, so I hope you’re okay with what you got instead. I hope you get outside today and I hope the sun kisses you so sweetly that you spend the rest of the day with a distant, dazed smile on your face and you sleep better than you have in weeks.
dirty dishes in the bathtub it’s summer and the bugs are coming into my house I thought the purpose of a house was to separate me from them I don’t have a kitchen sink it’s true what they say you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone they tore down the bank and put up a dozen 2,000 square foot “micro-homes” I’ll never move back to where I’m from but if I wasn’t from there, would I? mom poem today a professional told me my nipples “look good” tomorrow I’ll wash my hair for the first time in 10 days the best part about lactating is you do it constantly
That’s all from me this week. For some ideas about how to spend your solstice, you can check out a little listicle I made last year for The Workbench. But if you’ve got plans already, that’s cool too. Either way, happy Friday.
Live, laugh, love ya —
