Summer Isn't Over Yet

I know there is only one day left of summer and it’s important to savor it. I’ve already seen leaves on ground and the first tiny apples at the farmer’s market. I’ve ignored them all. I’m holding firm to sun ripened tomatoes, berries, and nectarines. I’m wearing sandals for as long as is practical. It’s not that I don’t enjoy fall, because I do, but my concern is that summer seemed to evaporate this year, or never really present itself in the classic sense. We had plenty of days where it was hot and painfully humid, but not enough days where it was summer like it used to be, with a warm wind, where you crave being outside. I knew it was summer though because we had a few classic summer rains (in between fierce storms), and at some point, many weeks ago now, I had the first real tomato of summer. The sun had seemed increasingly bright and long winded these days and the temperatures increasingly warmer, all building this picture of summer but when I sliced a tomato for my sandwich at lunch, it was a deep red color, soft-firm texture, and lightly sweet but not cloying. It was a definitive red tomato and juicy. In tasting it, I was reminded of the great things about summer – swimming in a lake, flowers in bloom, eating rapidly melting ice cream, sitting out under a shady tree, cotton candy at a fair, getting caught out in the rain, the smoke off the grill, the green grass, the full trees swaying in the breeze, the thrum of frogs and bugs at night, the distinct way the rain smells, feeling the heat of sun, having so much daylight.

I feel like I haven’t had enough of summer this year. It’s been hot enough, but that relaxed feeling of time stretching out in front of you has been scarce. I still want to spend plenty of time outside because the other thing that makes you appreciate summer is that winter is coming, not immediately but eventually, so you almost try to absorb the summer and carry it with you as far as it will last once the wind turns cold and the sun begins to fall. I’m not sure how to get that feeling of freedom back. For various reasons, we didn’t take a real vacation this year and so maybe that is part of it, but I’ve been trying to steal little moments that feel like vacation, that take us out of our lives, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Maybe that is really what summer is, it’s the season that entices us to step away from our lives, to linger longer outside, to jump back in the water, to have more ice cream.

Think carefully about the time left and the best summery things to do with it. My plans include continuing one more beach read (even though I’m not at the beach), and sitting out under the huge silver maple in the yard. What will your last minute summer plans be?