A Mellow Summer Breeze

 

 

Oil Painting By
William Merritt Chase

 

Happy Saturday My Wonderful and Faithful Readers!!

It's Labor Day Weekend and that means that some of us are recalibrating and getting ready for the beginning of a new season.  Chrysanthemums, pumpkins and school supplies are already pushing their way into the stores.

What's the hurry?

It may be the first day of September but it's still warm and sunny and mentally I am all about the breezes of summer and how it makes me fine. . .

Do your remember the Seals and Crofts classic song, Summer Breeze?  I can hear the screened door slamming and smell the Coppertone and French Fries already:

Summer Breeze

Written by James Seals (lyrics & music) & Derrell G. "Dash" Crofts (music)

 

See the curtains hangin' in the window
In the evening on a Friday night
A little light-a-shinin' through the window
Lets me know everything's all right

Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin' though the jasmine in my mind

See the paper layin' on the sidewalk
A little music from the house next door
So I walk on up to the doorstep
Through the screen and across the floor

Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowin' through the jasmine in my mind

Sweet days of summer -- the jasmine's in bloom
July is dressed up and playing her tune
And I come home from a hard day's work
And you're waitin' there
Not a care in the world

See the smile awaitin' in the kitchen
Through cookin' and the plates for two
Feel the arms that reach out to hold me
In the evening when the day is through

Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind

Falling Into Fall

Photo By Eileen Milner

Early this morning I opened the front door to get the newspaper and felt a chill in the air that can mean only one thing:  the seasons are starting to change and I don't like it.

Summer is my very, very favorite season of the year.  It is totally the best!  I know, I know, I hear lots of you out there saying something garbled about the heat and humidity in DC, but I don't care.  Summer is light clothing, fresh fruits and vegetables and long days.  Summer is bare feet, freshly cut grass and beach time.  My thinking about summer is: Bring It.  The hotter the better.  Temperatures below 75 degrees are cold and unwelcome.

But besides the change in temperature, I also don't like the emotional shift that I feel happens when we pass from the month of August to the month of September.  Maybe it's a holdover childhood days of leaving summer and going back to school in September, but I feel it's something more.  What is it about the change of seasons that thows my thoughts in a tumble?  It's almost similiar to saying good-bye and I guess in a way that's what I'm doing.

I'm saying good-bye to a time of the year that makes me really happy.  I'm saying good-bye to a sense of freedom and relaxation even though I'm really not ready to say hello to a time of year that brings shorter days, cooler climates, and the holidays.  Today, I saw pumpkins in the grocery store and I wanted to cover them up.  Mother Nature is forging ahead, working her magic while she moves us into another time of the year and in that process, I am thinking about how I'll have to start wearing a coat, how I need to clean up the yard and what my husband is doing.  Every year I think I'm going to stop feeling that way and I don't.  I know that for me autumn is harder than spring but I think that has to do with the fact that he died in November.

It could be that in the transition from one season to the next I am thinking about how I don't want it to get cold outside, how I don't want it to snow and as I am thinking, I tend to let my mind wander which leads me to thinking about him.  He is still in and out of my thoughts depending on what is happening in the world, what is happening to me at work, what is happening to our son at college or what is happening to his four other children as they make their way through life.

It's so funny how my son and I try to figure out when events happened by whether his Dad was alive or not when they occurred.  What year did that happen?  I don't know...Was Daddy alive then?  He was?  Okay, then it must have been 2002.

I wonder about how he is and if he would like the person I have become now that he is gone.  Maybe I just don't like winter because he liked it.