It happens every year but somehow, it’s always surprising: the change.
Slowly, the hillsides turn from green to brown. The rattlesnakes emerge as if needing a tan. The sun seemingly bends its arc, hitting the ocean at new angles, causing a lake of shimmering diamonds. The roads thicken out of necessity as time downshifts, accommodating leisure, jaywalkers and ice cream.
Summer foreplay is here.
The weekends are warmer, the crowds eager. If you are a local, it’s your last chance to eat without a reservation. From now on, everything will be full. Everything will be busy, and you will quietly curse the tourists.
Inexplicably, it was a short winter. The winters have been getting shorter for some time. One wonders without exaggeration, will there be winters in the future?
Will there be time to decompress before the glare of summer exposes all our sins? Unfortunately, there were not enough steps, not enough sweat during the off-season. We roll into summer a little less fit than last time. Maybe we forgo the new bathing suit and revert to our favorite one that’s more ample and forgiving.
Regardless, summer foreplay is still exciting. There is hope for something new. What is summer without expectation? If nothing else, even if we can’t articulate what it is, we still believe in the certainty of summer.
We know summer; therefore, we know ourselves.
We can look down at our mottled arms and see summers past. Too much sun. Too much ignorance. Would we change the past? Perhaps, but not if it means less sand, salt and daydreams.
We spent hours doing absolutely nothing on the beach. Reading. Getting into the water to cool off and pee. People watching. Envying others. Laughing. Not caring. Caring too much.
But for some reason over the years, each new summer faded slightly. Life became more complicated. There simply was not as much time for beach time. And certainly, no more tanning for the hell of it.
At some point, we stopped going entirely.
Maybe that’s why now, at this magical moment before summer, we long for summer’s return. We long for the time when we indulged in summer, in ourselves.
We long for the time when summer defined our happiness.
