As the sun sets on another summer, I feel a certain melancholia setting in. It starts with the soft music of crickets chirping me to sleep at night. It's an old memory association, a reminder that school will be starting soon. There are subtle changes in the day's light; sun's rays are more angled, casting long shadows early in the afternoon. And if you go sailing on the Great South Bay on Long Island in late August, the wind off the water carries the briny scent of the sea.
I spend the last few days of summer watching the red sunsets with a pouting face and a feeling of gloom. It's comical, really, because summer is not even my favorite season of the year. In fact, I get a feeling of dread every year as summer approaches. I hate the heat, the green flies and mosquitoes, and since I am out of shape I am not happy wearing the summer wardrobe of shorts and swimsuits.
Fall is my favorite season with bulky sweaters to cuddle in, boots and long skirts, tweedy jackets and the smell of a new leather shoulder bag. I relish the cool nights in October that bring relief from summer heat and the dramatic skies that follow in November. In winter, I delight in the sound of hail pelting my windows and gusty winds blowing against my door as I watch a winter storm and sip a hot cup of tea near the fireplace. So why this bluesy feeling every August when summer ends?
Summer's end brings to me a feeling of loss. No other season has the dramatic sense of ending that summer does. All the other seasons seem to overlap, to blend into one another, as if time and season will go on forever, but summer clearly ends. When it is over the lifeguard stands topple, the clam bars close, the children are gone to school, the streets are silent and the bay is still. Even the sun disappears. Before we get a chance to set dinner out on the picnic table in these last days of August, it is already getting dark.
So we close up the house, lock the windows against the coming chill of fall and freezing nights of winter and mourn the sun's absence like Demeter mourned her Persephone. Farewell to summer 2009. I'll see you in September.
(photo by Paul Vanderberg)
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