cruel summer
the worst season is upon us
Some of my fondest childhood memories take place during summer. Running through the cold water of the sprinkler in my backyard then jumping straight into the pool. Chasing the ice cream man down the block so I can get a popsicle. Vacations at my aunt’s house upstate. Catching fireflies. Freedom. Oh, summer seemed so vast and expansive, it felt like it lasted forever and by the time my birthday came around at the end of August, I’d feel sated and rested and ready to go back to school.
Summers are different when you’re a child in school. Summer meant sleeping in and watching cartoons and riding bikes around the neighborhood with your friends. There were no expectations from the season, not like fall with the anticipation of Halloween or winter and Christmas. There was just June, July, and August spread out before us, blank pages waiting for us to fill them up with laughter and joy and that inescapable sense that life as a kid was pretty damn good but you better hurry up and enjoy it. And enjoy it, we did.
Summer, for me, has taken on a much different tone as I got older. The best thing about the season - the freedom - is gone. A work day is a work day, it doesn’t matter that it is 90 degrees and a perfect day for the beach or the pool. By switching from student to worker, everything good about summer disappeared and I have been left with just the heat and humidity. I hate hot weather. I hate humidity.
But what about the weekends, you ask. Surely you lounge by the pool or go to the beach or spend the day at an arboretum or a park or take in baseball game. No. I do not. I avoid the outdoors during summer. I seek shelter from the oppressive weather, from the glaring sun, from the feeling that I am drowning in my own sweat. I prefer my air conditioned living room to sitting outside in sweltering heat.
Let’s talk about the beach for a minute. I hate the beach. I have since I was little and a wave knocked me over and I thought I was done for. That incident forged a war with the beach for me. The unrelenting sun beating down on you, the sand that gets in your bathing suit and follows you home, the depth and vastness of the evil, beckoning ocean, I just could never figure out what people see in the beach. So while an ocean excursion is a joy for some of you, I do not have that luxury. I hate the beach. There is no escape from the heat for me because I will not go into the water. Is this my own doing? Sure. Doesn’t make me hate it any less.
I know some people will say, “Well I live in a place with great weather, and summer is no different than spring here” and to that I say, it’s not just the weather. It’s the way summer feels like the longest stretch of the year. I fully anticipate autumn and sometimes it feels like it’s never going to get here. Summer is a slog. It feels like a long walk in a desert with no oasis in sight; like walking on hot pavement barefoot for three months. I turn the calendar to June and I sigh - a long, protracted sigh -and I know I am in for the longest three months of my life. Every day I walk from my air conditioned house to my air conditioned car to my air conditioned office and do my best to escape the humidity that threatens to drown me in my own sweat. Maybe there’s no humidity where you live. I live on an island. It’s oppressive.
Ask me if there’s anything I like about the summer, and I’ll say fresh corn on the cob and garden tomatoes and baseball, the occasional dip into my parents’ pool, our annual family party that takes place in August, watching my hydrangeas bloom. Those are wonderful things. But they are not enough to temper my hatred of the season. I spend these months longing for the cool temperatures of fall, for the changing of the leaves, for the early darkness (which I used to hate) that signals the day is over at a proper time and not 9pm. But the things I loved about summer when I was a kid - freedom, spending an entire day in the pool, reading in the backyard for hours - are things that no longer are available to me or please me. I’m just not cut out for summer anymore.
I took an informal poll on twitter last night, and it seems like I am in the minority. People love summer. They love the beach and the sand and the heat and even the humidity. They go out on boats (no thank you) and go on hikes (not in the heat) or just sit in their backyard enjoying the heat(??) while eating hot dogs and burgers and those things may not be fun to me but they are too a vast majority of people so who am I to say? This is just one person’s admittedly bad opinion.
It is May 11th and it’s going to be near 80 today. For myself, the optimum temperature is 75. Anything above that is torture. David Berman sings “it’s sunny and 75, it feels so good to be alive” on the song “People,” and I take that as my mantra. 75 is a perfect temperature. It’s not cool, it’s not hot. I don’t need a jacket, but I don’t need to escape the outdoors, either. Maybe I should move somewhere it always feels like spring. I hear San Diego is nice, but then I wouldn’t get that change of seasons in September I crave so much. No, I’ll stick it out on this longish island with its heat and humidity and endless days of feeling like I’m suffocating. But I will complain about it.