jubilee

Summer in youth. Sometimes it smelled like freshly-cut grass and sometimes it smelled of old petroleum. Sometimes the heavens rumbled and the air tingled heavily while lazily deciding whether or not to open up in a brief wet apocalypse. Sometimes the old muddy patches dried and cracked and all the little ants would have to make long detours on their sunbaked rounds.

You feel it waking up around you during those last agonizing weeks at school. The winter had been endless and the spring disappointing, all dark and drizzling like a frustrated autumn. You don't really notice the buds of early flowers except as a minor curiosity, or maybe even a lie. In this land of bare trees and sullen skies, nothing will ever grow and bear fruit again...

But one day it's all there, no way to pretend otherwise (as if, for some strange reason, you wanted to). The tress like slow emerald fireworks have exploded with leaves, they're shutting out the sky...which only now has returned to its deep blue and puffy white majesty. The grass is growing again, fast enough to sudden worry again about mowing.

Just as the new green dryad leads shy, pretty May out the door, Joyous June bursts in shouting of freedom and adventure. Her nights are heady, and when July joins the party you may be forgiven for wondering if there is no end to the celebration. There may be a lovely dark side to July and August alike, the heavy lazy days. Secret luxury in frowns, complaining about the heat. Sudden storms and bubbling blacktop. Nights as bright and alive as the days, or as the days can never be in their dull glare.

Yet August is also sad- she sees her sister September, buttoning up and slicking back, seemingly girding for the year's end already. The lush green grows desperate, the revelry a little too loud- maybe to drown out the goodbyes that are starting to be whispered? There's always that one last event, that final blow-out. Is it that day at the beach when the breeze comes slightly chilly over the waves in the afternoon? Is it a welcome-back party for friends absent all summer, or a going-away party for those whom the fall will sweep from us?

You return from vacation to find, thank god, that you have a few days left to unwind before the autumn demands its first sacrifices. A few days of green bliss, settling down and taking a look around you, something you haven't really done since...oh, May or June, probably. You can't say it went too fast, precisely...some of those deliciously wasted days in mid-July especially seemed to last forever...but it's just that now that it's almost over, you wish there could be just a little more. September usually obliges you with a few wonderful weeks, but it's just not the same.

And one day another summer is gone. There aren't many of them left, are there? There certainly aren't as many summers as there are years, despite what the calendars say. They're very much like friends; so much fewer and fainter as you get older. In a happy life you may get a dozen or so real ones, and I suppose just one or two is enough, if they're really good. The best ones are always long ago and never again.

So open the windows as wide as you can. Put the top down and crack open a cold one. Fire up the grill and drag out the lawn furniture. Take trips and stay out late. Enjoy every bead of sweat and every mosquito bite. Fall asleep in the bright afternoon and wake up with a sunburn. Hack off the legs of your jeans. Jump into any body of water you can find.

Maybe you can make a new friend, and maybe you'll actually have another summer to take with you down the rest of the road. Maybe not- nothing about summer is ever guaranteed, and I guess it shouldn't be.