I've made no secret of the fact that I'm no longer a fan of summer. Advancing age has slowed my walk and dulled my senses to the point that I simply cannot keep up with the frenetic "Go! Go! Go!" of long warm days and short sleepless nights. For many, summer is like a 90-day-long party. I'm hard pressed to party for even 90 minutes, much less 90 days. When fall rolls around and the pace slows down, the nights get longer and the days lose their aggressive heat, I am SO there for it.
And of course, for the past 2 years, we've had COVID to deal with, as well as summer. Ordinarily, I'm just as happy to stay away from the crowds summer brings to local recreation areas in a largely tourist-driven economy. So I can't say I was terribly unhappy when the summer of 2020 rolled into history and I had done nothing and gone nowhere for 3 months. But this year, we were looking forward (sort of...) to jump-starting Cafe de la Rue with a return to the Scandinavian Festival. And we almost did it...came within a hair. But as July approached, I realized our age-depleted work force was not going to be able to handle the event. And then, Delta variant arrived, our vaccinated nephew came down with COVID, and we knew that the 2021 Festival was going to have to go forward without us old people who, three short months previously, were so certain we would be out from under the COVID threat for good.
I honestly don't know whether to be elated or depressed about that particular development. The only mildly sad part was that without the activity and engagement of production, set-up, and the actual festival week itself, summer yawned on even more interminably than usual.
I sweated and dragged, sighed and coughed my way through July and August. It seemed as if the days just kept getting longer and longer, hotter and hotter, smokier and smokier.
By the third week of August, I was seriously jonesing for fall. I started bringing out my fall decorations (everybody was harping, "It's a little early for that, isn't it?") If it couldn't be fall outside, I was going to have it inside, by god.
The last week of August rolled by like a freight train grinding to a halt just before it gets completely clear of the railroad crossing. "Oh, god...it's still only August!" Eighty- and ninety-degree days pulled summer along with them deep into September.
Then I blinked twice...and it's almost October.
It's here at last. MY time of the year.
I going to wrap my arms around it and hug it like a long-lost friend.
