Let Summer Linger

After a summer of tanning under the fluorescent lights, I am ready to emerge into the actual sunshine of Seatowne tomorrow for another year.

We used to follow the natural order and vacation in July, when the ocean just across the street was still warming up and we could watch the sunset from the dock at about as late an hour as it could set. But cost and other considerations have surfaced and now we head to Fenwick Island the week after Labor Day, when traffic has dispersed, football season has already started and we can chow down on ribs without waiting in line. It is still summer for us.

Summer was supposed to have ended last Monday, of course. We were supposed to have put white shoes in storage for the fall and let the smell of sunscreen fade to be replaced by the smell of burning leaves. Ignore the calendar and look at the stars, which tell us summer doesn’t end until the Vernal Equinox in another few weeks. Ignore tradition and let summer linger as long as there’s a little heat left in the sky.

Summer ends when we say it does. The natural world doesn’t turn off the heat spigot on the first Tuesday in September. It’s different for kids of school age and their parents, of course, because the state does not recognize the weather when it tells kids to sit back down at those desks. I always felt weird going back to school the day after Labor Day on those years when it was still 90 degrees. It didn’t feel like autumn was beginning. It felt more like it was still summer and they were stealing some of my season. I remember hearing adults say things like “They’re ready to go back,” projecting their wishes onto me. I for one was never ready. I wasn’t bored and I didn’t need to go to school to let me see my friends because I saw them every day of the summer at the pool and that was a lot more pleasant than seeing them over some long division.

So now we wait a little longer and head south in early September. It’s a little cooler but pleasantly deserted, like everybody else left the party while it still had some life left in it. Even if we don’t luck out again and the weather turns to crap, we’ll always be lucky since we get to gather with friends on the deck and laugh about the old days, making more memories that we’ll be laughing about someday in the future.

Let summer linger a little longer. Duty will return again, whining for attention from the next room at 3 a.m. when you’re trying to sleep. In the meantime, I will wring every last drop of summer out, like a towel left on the beach that got soaked by the incoming tide. In life, you stay on the deck and laugh as long as you can until something chases you inside.