August 7, 2008
"Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tides always and a full moon every night," --Hal Borland
Summer is waning. We never see the end coming do we, and its end always breaks my heart.
I planned to have a lazy, carefree summer with lots of time to swim, picnic, and read, just like I did in the summers of my youth.
Instead, I painted the deck, attended meetings, fought broadleaf weeds in the yard, and visited relatives.
Each year, I continue to search for this "end of the rainbow", if you will, a futile attempt to recapture the untroubled and happy-go-lucky days of summers past.
Incidentally, if you have ever walked toward the end of a rainbow you know that it will continue to move further away. In truth, a rainbow does not actually exist in a particular location, just like cherished summer memories.
In this series about a time before air conditioning, we have revisited a variety of summer memories.
We talked about enjoying homegrown tomatoes, dressing chickens, championing summer laziness as a virtue, loving the patriotism of bygone days, reminiscing about long lost summer romances, "putting up hay", taking road trips and watching each others' slide shows, and spending hours of our summer vacation doing crafts such as paint-by-number kits.
And, there are more lovely memories to recall as well. Memories such as these:
Playing outside all day with no sunscreen or bug spray for protection as we wandered through the timber naming the trees and rocks in order to reenact our favorite western movies.
"Meet you at Twin Oaks," I said to my siblings and cousins. " I will be at Lone Rock watching out for outlaws." We believed we were a posse of cowboys, lawmen, and cowgirls chasing the bad guys."
We stayed out all morning in this pursuit until my mother honked the car horn to call us home for dinner, served at 12-noon straight up. She never knew where we were but assumed we would come back if injured too badly.
I remember riding a go-cart made from scraps of metal and an old gas engine and driving it very fast while releasing the governor so it would move even faster, often downhill and into bushes. Iodine was eventually applied to the ensuing scrapes because there was no such thing as Neosporin.
In the afternoons, we went to the library and "borrowed" a new book, or we went swimmin' in the town pool. Evenings were filled with playing tag or other games and eating homemade ice cream.
Wistfully, I pine for a way back to the unworried summers of our youth, as the memories there are simply too delicious to forget.
I apologize to no one for being so spoony (excessively sentimental).
"There's nothing you can say to make me change my mind... as we look back and see our yesterdays entwine, the beauty and the truth of the summers of our youth. And you can go there anytime. The movies in your mind" (lyrics from "Summers of our Youth" by M. Furuholmen).
