The Summer Solstice and other stuff

Tomorrow will be the Summer Solstice.

Today I awoke to thunder.  It is a dreary, rainy day.

Tomorrow, the Summer Solstice, is the longest day of the year.  I hope the weather clears.  It is a shame to lose the longest daylight day to dark thunderheads.

I love the Summer Solstice... and I dread it.  I love it, because I love light, and daytime.  I love summer: sunshine, flowers, hamburgers on the grill, walking, swimming, and not dealing with school.

But the summer solstice also signals the beginning of the end.  After tomorrow, the days will begin to shorten again.  It will be imperceptible at first, but even so, the descent to winter will have begun.

And school isn't even over yet.  Jon has his last test tomorrow.  I cannot even begin to describe the outrage in my soul over the NYS school calender.  I've lived here for twenty-four years, more than half my life, but the Minnesota in my soul still tells me that there is a fundamental sin in continuing school more than a week beyond Memorial Day.

Summer is funny, you know.  Here, especially, it goes so fast... stupid WalMart practically has their back-to-school displays up before school has finished in June.  (One year I went to buy Valentines at WalMart and found that they had already replaced all their red velvet hearts with shiny green shamrocks, on about February 12.  So I went over to Wegman's and found a lovely assortment of Valentines still stocked and available.  I love Wegman's.)

I realized that one reason summer goes so fast is this:  every week is completely different.  You never settle into a routine where you know that Monday will bring X, Tuesday will bring Y, and Friday will bring Z.  No, each summer week (and there are not many of them) has a flavor all its own.  There is the week Shawn is in Montreal (that would be this one).  The week we go on our 25th anniversary trip.  The week Shannon comes to visit.  The week Laura goes to training at SU.  The week Jon goes to camp.  The week of VBS.  The week we are at the beach.  See what I mean?  Every week is different, and it puts the rhythm of the season into a state of extreme acceleration.

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice, and I wish everything would just slow down.

I wish everyone could take the day off and be home.  I wish we could sit out by the pool, swim, eat grilled chicken and red peppers.  I wish we could talk and laugh, lazy and slow.  I wish we could rest, relax, and metabolize beatific quantities of vitamin D under the sun.  I wish the longest day of the year would last forever.

I think, actually, that heaven will be like that: the longest day of summer, lasting forever.