In reviewing poetry for a class I will be teaching, I ran across one of my
favorite lines of poetry, Emily Dickinsons memorable phrase: "As imperceptibly
as grief, the summer lapsed away." How grief effects each of us is a topic for
another column, but I cant help but think of this line every time someone asks me,
"Hows your summer?" or, "Having a good summer?"
They probably want me just to say, "Fine," or "Great,"
as I would to the usual greeting "How are you?" Nonetheless, I am tempted to
tell them more than they really want to hear about how my summer is going. Because, the
truth is, Im wasting time mourning its passing even as it slips away from my grasp.
Its simply going to fast.
I love summer. I love the way it has everybody outside. In fact, I long
for more front porches and neighborhood stops where one can greet someone and just chew
the fat.
In my familys small home in Burbank, Calif., much of our life was
spent outdoors, especially when the days were San Fernando Valley hot and the nights cool,
often causing tussles when mom wanted me to take a sweater.
Even though the climate permitted our being allowed outside most of the
year, still summer was the time when Mr. Adams down the street would bring out several
watermelons and let as many kids as possible run down to his small clapboard house and
gorge on the crispy cold slices. He was an old man; and I often think of him as the
grandfather I never experienced having in my family. At least he was the generous and
loving grandpa I fantasized about as a child. Or there were the endless games of
"kick-the-can" and "hide and go-seek" and the usual softball attempts
on our too-narrow street.
Later, when my own young family was growing up in Malibu, we also spent
most of our summers outside. I often counted eight to 10 neighborhood kids backhanding
balls against the side of our house, exploring the creek nearby, building forts on the
hill below our deck, or terrorizing us mothers with their too-speedy skateboard runs down
the steep street of our block.
It was idyllic in retrospect; now I find that summer here stimulates the
feelings I got then when going barefoot and wiggling our toes in tall grasses were the
order of the day.
As a grownup with no kids at home, I experience different pleasures, of
course. I appreciate the rampant beauties of our mountains, letting my dogs run free in
the wilderness away from cars and constraints, the sounds of the summer symphony in the
early evening, eating outside and thus somehow feeling more friendly and casual at the
same time, or even just walking whenever I feel like it without having to load up with the
right gear. A lot like going barefoot in California.
The only trouble with all this, and yet the thing which makes it even more
precious, is that there really isnt enough summer for someone like me to experience
here. I have to pack it all in. I feel guilty if I dont.
Last week a friend and I were floating a very low and mild stretch of
river near Stanley. As we relished the slight breeze off the cool river, giggling at our
attempts to steer the kayaks, we asked ourselves why we havent done this every
summer and, in fact, more this summer. The easy answer, of course, is that we work and
have responsibilities and find the time just slips away
as imperceptibly as grief.
One day its more a memory than a reality.
And it is a human fault to take what is right by us for granted. There
were weeks when I didnt get down to the ocean just one-half mile from our home on
Serra Road in Malibu. There are weeks here, even in the summer, when I will walk my tried
and true trails instead of exploring some of the less-traveled hikes nearby.
Ray Bradbury wrote a delightful and poignant story called "All Summer
in a Day" about kids who are living on another planet where it rains solidly all the
time. Only once every seven years, for just a few minutes, the rain stops and the sun
shines.
The kids are readying themselves for that day and are irritated with a new
arrival to the planet who has come from earth and remembers what it feels like to have the
suns warmth. In a fit of ignorant pique, the kids lock her in a closet while they go
out to play for those precious minutes before the rain returns.
Only when they come back in the classroom with the fresh memory of the
kiss of the sun on their cheeks do they realize the terrible thing they have done to their
classmate. It hits them with a terror how cruel they have been.
Sometimes I feel like I have to treat my beautiful summers here as if I
will never experience them again, savoring every joy and flower and smell of barbecue as
though it were my last. Otherwise, I might, in a sense, miss all of it just as did the
unfortunate child in Bradburys story.