Come the Fourth of July, my friend Linda already is puckering up her lips to kiss the summer goodbye.
I like Linda. A lot. But, on this point, we disagree.
And yet. . . I can't lie, and claim that I don't feel the subtle pressure Fall is applying. I can't lie and claim that I don't possess faint whisperings of seasonal ADHD, quietly counting how many times more I have to don a swimsuit, grill a hot dog, ride my bike in the early-morning sunlight.
Come evening, it's hard not to notice the cicadas whirring up their sex songs, while fewer and fewer fireflies turn on their "open" signs in the grassy hollows of my yard.
Both, in their own ways, are harbingers of change.
I am not a fan of regret. It is, I believe, a kind of poison, taking our attention away from the here and now and plunking it into the impossibly rigid past. Why, then, does the waning of summer always seem to ride the shoulders of regret?
Probably because I've been given such heaping helpings of freedom and, suddenly, as the evenings grow cooler, I start to wonder if I've chosen well.
Better that I don't fret such things, though. Better that I simply trust that the things and the people and the idle hours that have filled my season have renewed me, as well.
No, better that I remind myself that, despite the Target and Shopko ads, I still have more summer in front of me than most Americans have weeks of vacation each year.
Soon, I am soothed again, both by the uninterrupted hours I am willing to give over to a book and the utter inability to identify what day of the week it is, more or less the significance of such a day.
Soon enough, the lazy blur of my summer will be pushed aside for the crisp and steady beat of a new season.
Soon enough. But not today.
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