Summer Daze

It’s been one of those weekends. You know the kind, where parts of it feel like they’ve been whisked away on angel’s wings and the other portions drag on like high school math class. And now that it’s close to its inevitable end it seems to be picking up speed again, rolling downhill like a snowball getting larger until it hits you in the face.

And I love this time of year, when the daylight stretches on forever, when six o’clock at night feels just like six o’clock in the morning, and when the kids come in from swimming with their hair soaking wet and their multi-colored towels wrapped tightly around them so they look like they’re in little cocoons. They’re my little caterpillars waiting to sprout wings and be butterflies.

The air outside is getting a little cooler in the mornings, and the morning dew a wee bit frostier too. But when the heat comes in the mid-morning it hits hard, searing and immediate, the humidity rolling off me in waves. Beads of sweat also roll off me in waves. Then the rain comes down, a cooling shower that cleanses the earth and catches me unaware. I run to grab the clothes off the line in the backyard, and frantically detach sweaters, shirts, pants, and towels from their pins, tossing them into the basket and running again.

A thin sheet is over my legs at night, but it more often than not gets twisted up and under my legs by midnight. I toss and turn, but a dreamless sleep for the most part comes over me. Morning always comes too soon, and I do it all over again. Until the days begin getting shorter. Until six o’clock in the morning begins to differentiate itself from six o’clock at night. And warmth gives way to coolness of home and hearth.

But for now, I will simply enjoy the end of this weekend and the beginning of forever.

Sam