Making Peace With Summer

This Facebook memory popped up today from June 20, 2018, when I was still teaching seventh grade:

“Hubby refers to the person he’s living with right now as ‘Summer Carie.’ Summer Carie is a little crazy. She stays up late but also, somehow, gets up early. She reads for hours on end, only stopping to skip over to her husband, kiss him on the cheek, and tell him her latest idea for a creepy short story. Summer Carie decides on a whim to turn an old skull candle into a bird feeder or clean out the medicine cabinet or reorganize all of the books in her house. She takes walks and naps and texts her husband far too much while he’s at work. Summer Carie can be a bit exhausting, but she’s happy and relaxed and carefree and creative.

I love her.

I love being a teacher, but I also love my summers. I NEED my summers. Without them, I would not love my job… Please don’t hate on teachers because we get the summers off. It’s not why we do the job. It’s why we CAN do the job.

Ok, I’m off to hide something of Hubby’s and leave him a trail of sticky note clues to find it. Summer Carie strikes again!”

Sometime in the past eight years, I fell out of love with summer. It mostly has to do with the rising heat and my body’s diminishing ability to tolerate it as I get older. It’s hard to imagine that I used to play 6pm softball games in July when I was a kid or practice all afternoon with the high school marching band in August. These days when the heat index is over a hundred—or worse, when the actual temperature is over a hundred and the heat index is some ungodly number above that—I can barely water my garden without dissolving into a sweaty, red-faced mess.

It’s not just the heat that drives me indoors and into a foul mood. It’s also the addition of things that make me itchy, both physically and psychologically—mosquitos and chiggers and ants—and the lack of things that bring me comfort and energy—campfires and crisp breezes and well-worn jeans and comfy boots. Now, when the calendar flips to June, I brace myself for the next four months, anticipating the anxiety of waiting and wishing for fall.

But this Facebook posts reminds me how I used to feel about summer, when it meant freedom and creativity and rejuvenation. I’m no longer teaching, but maybe I can make peace with summer and find the joy in it again. This year, I’m determined to try.

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice (or Litha, as the pagans call it), the longest day of the year and the official start of summer. To celebrate, I’m going to focus on the things I look forward to during this season and search for new delights to embrace.

10 Things I Love About Summer:

• Cicada shells (and their clickety clickety buzz buzz buzzzzz sound)
• Stone fruits (ripe plums and peaches and apricots, yum)
• Watermelon (not refrigerated, preferably with a few seeds to spit)
• Tarantulas (you may disagree on this one, but I love seeing the big furry creatures)
• Sundresses (the lighter weight the better)
• Cool showers (brr! refreshing!)
• Lightning bugs (I’m fortunate to have a few in my yard.)
• Taking an occasional swim (Who wants to share your pool with me?)
• Excuses to travel to less hot locations (I’m heading to Rhode Island this August!)
• Seeing my garden experience a new season (It was just a baby last June…)

New Summer Delights:

This evening, I’m making gazpacho. I’ll chill it overnight, so it’s ready to enjoy on the first day of summer. I’ve never made gazpacho. I’ve never even eaten gazpacho. But the idea of a crisp, refreshing vegetable soup pleases both my tastebuds and current temperament.

Tomorrow, I will wake up in time to watch the sunrise, enjoy a mug of cool tomatoey soup for lunch, and later sit outside to journal while the sun sets (mosquitos, be damned!) with several interludes indoors appreciating the AC.

Then, I will attempt to keep that coolness in my core as the days begin to shorten, and I wait (patiently, peacefully) for fall.