The Other Side of Summer

Well, it’s that time of year again: the time when the days are growing longer and longer, heading toward a luxurious apex of extended sunlight, after which I panic that the days are shortening and the summer waning before I’ve even started to enjoy it. Even in years when I was relatively unencumbered, workwise, I came up on the end of June with a gnawing sense that I hadn’t made the most of the hours of daylight afforded me. Maybe it’s just something internal to me. But every year I pledge that I will find ways to get out and enjoy the longer days before that balancing point of summer solstice comes, that I will appreciate the gift of light that lasts past eight, just sit out and marvel at it.

And every year it doesn’t happen, and somehow I always forget why. It’s the extensive rains – we had five inches ( allow me to scream that: FIVE INCHES!!!) of rain around here last week, one useable day on a holiday weekend, followed by a tornado that decided to visit my sister’s house. It’s the travel – it’s a busy time of year for me, and some of these pre-summer evenings, such as this one, I’m having to appreciate the long, low light over the Hudson from the windows of an Amtrak train. It’s the academic schedule, with school this night and school that night, tests to prepare for and projects to make sure are done.

This weekend, we’ve got the SAT and the Freihofer’s run in the same morning, followed by a dance recital that will take up all of the next day. Still it’s not that we haven’t enjoyed what we’ve had so far. We’ve eaten dinner outside a number of times already, and have found several excuses for consuming Mac’s homemade ice cream in Watervliet. While the rain has made kayaking the rivers less than enticing, we’ve gotten out on bikes as a family a bunch of times and swallowed every kind of bug the bike path has to offer. And after a nearly year-long massive construction project, my front porch is, while not nearly finished, at least a place where we can sit of an evening and stare into the westering sun (without feeling the heat; the former porch was something of a greenhouse).

So to some extent I’m writing this to remind myself: the days are long, and I am noticing them. Summer is not over at the solstice. Calm down and enjoy. There’s still time before you’re on the other side of summer.