So here we are again, at another summer’s end. The kids are back in school. The beaches have closed, and the ballparks will follow in a few weeks. Each day ends a bit earlier, the light coming at sharper angles as the sun sets further and further to the south, and the air takes on hints of autumn crispness.
With the season’s passing comes the end of all those activities-picnics and barbecues, street festivals and art fairs, outdoor concerts and movies in the parks-that just weeks ago seemed to offer endless amounts of sun-drenched fun.
And not a moment too soon. Because, really, could you bear another week of knowing there was so much summertime fun you could be having, if only you had more time for it? Admit it: It’s a relief that summer’s over and you no longer feel pressured to take advantage of it.
It’s as much a part of the season as the Cubs’ raising hopes and then dashing them-that inevitable moment, somewhere in mid-July, when you think, “Where has the summer gone?”
With that thought comes the urgent sense that you must do something more with what’s left of it-get out on a boat, play more golf/tennis/softball, work in the garden or on your tan-but it’s a losing battle. By then the days are already growing shorter. Within a few weeks, the 10 o’clock news, with commercials for back-to-school sales and reports from football training camps, foreshadows autumn’s arrival, and it’s downhill from there.
Lost opportunities for summer enjoyment cause a particularly wistful kind of regret, as if they’re somehow more precious than those of other seasons. (Never mind that, truth be told, much of summer is best spent indoors. There’s a reason we have air conditioning. And mosquito repellent.)
Like all neuroses, the yearning for more summer recreation has its beginnings in childhood. Unless you were one of those unfortunate farm children for whom summer vacation was originally intended and spent May through August working in the fields, your summers were probably spent at the pool, at camp and complaining that there was nothing to do. Remember when all you had to do all day was avoid the crushing burden of having to mow the lawn?
Childhood establishes the precedent that summer is a months-long interlude of carefree leisure, and that shapes our expectations of the season long after adulthood teaches us otherwise. So, we’re more annoyed than usual when we have to cancel an evening in Grant Park because there’s too much work to do, or spend a July weekend stuck in our home office finishing up a report. (“I’m a-gonna raise a fuss, I’m a-gonna raise a holler, ’bout workin’ all summer just to try to earn a dollar,” as the late Eddie Cochran sang.)
We seem to forget that the demands of work and family and friendships don’t stop from June to September. If anything, they increase. A colleague observes that there are only a dozen or so weekends in a given summer, and half of them are filled with christenings, graduations, weddings and other social obligations. Meanwhile, the kids are off from school, and unless they’re old enough for summer jobs, someone has to shepherd them to the pool and to camp. (But given that your average 8-year-old’s days are more heavily scheduled than the president’s, at least they’re less likely to moan “there’s nothing to do.”)
It’s not that summer is No Fun. A look back on my own calendar reminds me that I got to a few baseball games, ate some dinners at sidewalk cafes and caught an outdoor concert where I rediscovered the serene pleasure of drinking beer out of a can on a summer afternoon.
But somehow it seems inadequate. The very overabundance of summer fun creates a no-win situation: No matter how much you do, you can’t do it all. Not with three different blockbuster movies opening each weekend and your neighborhood block party and drinks after work at that new beer garden.
Still, we try to fit in as much of it as possible, with the result that everyone’s so overextended that summer “relaxation” becomes yet one more source of stress.
One friend of mine packed a circus performance, a barbecue and a music festival into this past 4th of July. The following weekend, I found myself simultaneously scheduled to be at both a picnic with good friends whom I hadn’t seen in months and my sister-in-law’s birthday party. The traffic alone getting into many events is enough to make a person feel the end of summer can’t come soon enough.
Wouldn’t it be easier to acknowledge that summer isn’t more fun than the rest of the year-it’s just more humid?
Eddie Cochrane was wrong. There is a cure for the summertime blues. It’s called Labor Day.
Summer’s over. Now I can finally relax.
