Yesterday I stepped into the shower with dirty feet from running through the grass barefooted, and I remembered drawing brown designs on the bathtub floor with my toe as a kid when my feet were dirty. The water stung the tiny cuts on my elbows from the grass when I did a somersault to retrieve a Frisbee. My fingers were swollen from the heat and my ball glove, making my hands sweat and smell like leather. It was humid and hot and the sun made my face red and my legs sticky. This was summer.
I'm sorry to see it go. I seem to be having attacks of Christmas anticipation - accidentally hearing the first few bars of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," smelling cinnamon pumpkin spiced candles, observing the clerk in Hobby Lobby string white lights on their faux pine trees - and I find myself wishing the last few weeks of this summer away. How have I spent it? Sick, at a funeral, dodging mosquitoes, avoiding the heat, working over 40 hours a week in a windowless basement. It's easy to wish for football and pumpkin pie season when the windows are closed and the air conditioning is blasting, but I realized I've missed all the beauties of summer. Is this what being an adult means? I'm not willing to give up dirtied feet so I can be grown up. Is adulthood one long winter?
I do look forward to winter. In fact, I prefer December to August. I think it's more of a realization of passing time that bothers me, that unsatisfied feeling I have at the end of the summer that no relationships were strengthened and only a handful of books were read, none of them while lying out in the sun with a sprinkler squirting a droplet or two in my direction. I ate a piece of banana cake today and found it flavorless, so I ate a little more as if quantity would somehow make up for quality. That's how I feel about this summer. It has lacked, and I want to drag it out as if with just a little more of it I'll find what was missing and feel completed.
Summer, you old Indian summer,
You're the tear that comes after June-time laughter
You see so many dreams that don't come true
Dreams we fashioned when summertime was new
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Being a grown up is completely overrated. What say you we go back to the days we frolicked atop Tadpole Hill and escape the evil clutches of Queen Slugforabutt?
ReplyDeleteI miss the coffee cup.
Summer is awful in how it accentuates not being a kid anymore. You know I have not gone swimming once this summer? Not once! The closest I get to experiencing a beautiful day outside is to have someone point to the tiny square of skylight I can see in the food court ceiling and say, "Isn't it gorgeous out there?" *sigh*
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