When I think of summer, I think of the
sky, a saturated blue, the color of blue jays, which is so ridiculously,
unapologetically blue that they still look fake to me after all these years—like
mechanical chirping toys. Smack in the middle of this image is the sun, a
bright clementine orange, or yellow like the button on a daisy, shining it’s
very heart out like an optimistic cult evangelist, as if it had any choice, as
if it knew how to do anything else. This landscape is replete with billowy
spinach green treetops above sturdy brown trunks standing immutable in a lawn
of thick grass the color of my lime green shag bedroom rug back in the
eighties—I picked it out. It could not look more like a kindergartener’s crayon
masterpiece, or a cliché advertisement for an anti-depressant. But this vision
is not fake. It actually is what a clear, summer day looks like, astonishing in
its simplicity and hackneyed splendor. It’s what honestly jumps to mind. But
curiously, why is it always the days I imagine?
Summer nights seem to take a back seat as
if they were something I’ll get around to eventually like watering the
houseplants or putting the folded laundry away. It’s rare that I’m prodded to
visit those thoughts and images but when I do, oh, what joy. Short, greasy
dinners with paper napkins crumpled on plastic plates spent under patio
umbrellas with popsicle desserts, cherry red tongues and lips the color of
snapdragons and poppies, straightening after a daytime beating off bees and
heat. A cut out of the bright, white moon—also fake-looking, but there it
is—low in the still blue sky, a good hour until sunset but enough time to play
one more game of badminton or take a walk on the beach—no need to bring beach
chairs, just a tennis ball for tossing or a towel for a quick dip. The evening
dims almost abruptly, giving way to spectacular lavenders and greens in the
west, juicyfruit-striped magentas and peaches bouncing off ribbons of stratus
clouds, causing folks to stop mid-conversation and remark, astonished, “Just
look at that sky.” Then, the interruption comes, “Yes, you may play a little
longer if you run up and brush your teeth and put on your nightgown”—the
feeling of bare feet in the cooling grass, the sight of fireflies hovering
drunkenly, too slow to escape, the small excitement of wearing indoor clothes
outside.
I remember walking back from family
bar-b-ques with my son, sweatshirts on, carrying flashlights and glancing over
at the flickering TV’s and quiet kitchens of lit neighbor’s houses, dogs called
in for the night. I recall riding a bike to as many parties as I can, avoiding
the car at all costs, nesting a bottle of wine or crackers and dip in my front
basket. Often times I might wedge my tall sandals into the bike basket, too,
and pedal off towards the distant noise and bustle of easy conversation and
iPod music, loving the feeling of my bare feet on the rubber pedals, glad that
I finally got that long-overdue pedicure and deciding not to care that the
breeze will compromise whatever efforts I just made on shooing the humidity out
of my hair.
Late night, though, is the prize. Lying
in the sand, hoping for shooting stars, knowing without a doubt every second
that I must be looking in the wrong corner of the sky and probably missing it,
there? Not there, darn. But laughing as if the night might, just this once,
stretch out into a twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth hour just for me, so that we
can keep talking near the dunes, stretched out, sand working its way into
pockets and cuffs, arms warmed by the day’s sunburn, voices quiet and spare.
There’s little time before the sky lightens over the horizon, have we covered
everything we want to say? Is there anything left to wonder?
I love the negligible sound that my bare
feet make on the cement sidewalk, strolling back from the beach, barely a pad,
hardly a flap, on tip-toes sometimes for no reason. I turn my head in the
direction of a rousing ping-pong game in someone’s garage, or of friends
conversing on their bikes, side-by-side under streetlamps, riding at a steady
clip unaware of how their voices carry in the night, no-handed. No rush. I
thrill at the defiance—even if no one cares or notices—of climbing into bed
without washing off my feet, sure, I brushed them off with the damp towel
hanging on the railing from this afternoon’s swim, not yet dry. And who cares
if I didn’t get off all the little white bits that cling to the skin, tiny
pieces of shell—clam or crab, hermit or horseshoe. Who cares? I think. It’s
“Summer Rules” in every possible way. I’m fine with the straw-like quality of
my hair, damp from the waves’ spray, lending my pillow a salty scent, a little
sticky. I can shampoo tomorrow, change my sheets the day after that. Who cares,
again.
I read a few pages of a trashy novel
before drifting off to the rolling beat of the cicadas. The steady hum of the
day-trippers’ engines slow to an intermittent swish; someone home later than
usual, or up insanely early, hell-bent on missing the next day’s traffic. In
between cars, if the wind is still and before the birds awaken, sometimes, very
seldom, but sometimes, I can make out the waves crashing, or hear a morning
alarm clock going off in the middle distance, just as I’m falling asleep and
the sun is breaking. Only in summer does the night last so magically and
impossibly long.
Only in summer.
