When summer turns to simmer

Where did it go this year? And, just me, or does it happen faster and more rapidly every year? I'm talking about summer, whether you have or take summer vacation or not--today's the first of August and for all intents and purposes, we're talking about planning the last hurrahs of Labor Day picnics, and getting the kids ready to go back to school.

When I was a child, it used to scare me how quickly we went from the first Day of Summer Vacation to the First Day of School (and the only folks smiling were the Moms). As an adult, I'm numb to how quickly the days blur into a week, into a month and, before I know it, another season has come and gone. This is the time of year when one of the office supply superstores has a spot with a Christmas carol, 'It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year' as a soundtrack and the visuals are a Dad sailing through the store's aisles on the handlebars of a shopping cart, grabbing binders, pencils and paper while the two school age children trudge sadly behind him. I've been out of school a long time, but still mean it sincerely when I hope that guy eats a bug.

Around Memorial Day everyone asks everyone else, so what are you gonna do this summer? At the Fourth of July, we all check in to find out how the summer is going (no pressure, my friend, there's world enough and time), and now, well, now the summer is gone. Why are we geared to not enjoy now? It's always, 'next year in Jerusalem', no matter when or where. As Chuck Berry once warned, Almost Grown, and some us grow up and some of us grow old. And sometimes we only do one or the other and yet we continue to yearn for another time and another place.

When so many, bordering on too many, lives can be filed between Miniver Cheevy and Richard Cory, why even bother with the rest of the alphabet? If the unexamined life is not worth living, what is a life lived in a state of perpetual 'you just wait'? When you've lived End of the Season in a ceaseless cycle what do you substitute for surprise and joy, because you certainly have neither?

The lives we never led because of the ones we waited to happen can't be measured, so can they be mourned?Are we there yet becomes how did we get here. And no one is laughing, despite the calls to Send in the Clowns. And somewhere, in the grab bag and sad sack of lost and found hopes and dreams, there's the red nose and the floppy shoes. One size fits all, or none.
-bill kenny