Summer Syndrome

Summer Syndrome



I don’t believe in summer love. I believe in summer lust and summer hope. I believe in summer dreams and summer wishes, which are carried on the tops of dandelion seeds or on the tail of a dog, wishes as ephemeral as the red-orange tone of a June sunset.

I believe summer itself is a dream, a dream in which all conventionality is pushed aside, where reality is remarkably replaced by quixotic imagination. With summer comes an unparalleled form of wishful thinking, because in the glowing beam of orange evening light streaming through a window, anyone can look beautiful.

Summer distorts the appearance of anyone and anything. The clarity of spring, found on the dewdrops on tulip petals, evaporates into a romantic haze, a lazy, warm way of looking at the world and thinking that it is everything one could ever want or need in life.

The past does not exist in summer. Summer is now - summer has nothing to do with “then” or “soon.” Summer is not the rainy days of spring or the chilly days of autumn. Summer does not see bad days, because you are the creator of summer. You can choose to see summer for what its worth - nothing more than a heat wave settling across suburban pavement or an ice-cream cone dripping sticky drops onto toes. Or you can choose to fall prey to the enjoyment and romance it brings to lazy afternoons spent on the murky river and uneventful nights of driving through a town with only one stoplight.

Love is not supposed to make sense, not supposed to be clear, and not supposed to be conventional. It can happen anytime, but can only be created during three seasons out of the year. Summer can help the love that has budded in the springtime flower into a dreamy romance during the hot, humid months until that love freezes into the first frost on an autumn day.

But love cannot be found in the summer. Summer itself is not true, is not how life is. Maybe it is how life should be and could be, but summer slows everything down to a near-halt. Take the summer months in stride, and live life the way it has always been lived. Do not succumb to the smell of salty beach water and the trail of smoke wafting from the barbecue. These are lures that summer uses to make you believe life is perfect, and you will settle, and as soon as you settle into that life where nothing bad can occur, autumn will come and shake the sun right out of you.

Spring is your last chance for finding new love until the leaves change to a cherry red. When those leaves change, it will be like a sigh of relief, of knowing that you made it through another summer. You will exhale with the cool movement of the crisp autumn wind that chills you and stays with you far longer than summer ever could.