Summer Is Over

My life is a life in fast forward. It’s not that I intend for it to be so, it just is so. I have tried to slow it down. To hit pause. To freeze it for a day, or a week, or a month, or just a moment. But it’s impossible, and I’ve resigned myself to this unavoidable tragedy. Today is the third day of June. Today is a full day, like all of the others. There is dawn and then the sun works its way across this paled blue sky and then there is dusk. Fight it if you wish, but today is the third and tomorrow is the fourth and you might be reading this on the fifth. Can’t you see how the days pass? They pass calmly for some, but for me they rush past violently and I can’t grab a single one no matter how I try. Tomorrow, maybe that’ll be the day for me. Dammit, man, don’t you see how we’re losing this fight?

In early June you’d be excused for thinking that summer is still stretching out ahead of us in a parade of endless sunny days and bright blue waters. But the sailors have been sailing since April and I haven’t even had my boat rigged yet. The water pump failed, the company said. That’ll be $900 in addition to the other thousands, and for what? To take it out just as soon as I put it in, I guess. Next week it might be nice. But a customer of mine said he has to go to another terrible place to go to a terrible concert. His lakefront house will be empty. If you’re not in your lake house during the summer, does summer still happen? The cameras in your eaves say it does, but if you can’t feel it and taste it and walk across your lawn in your bare feet, what could matter?

What if Scrooge, upon asking the day, had been told it was December 27th? Would he have changed his ways? Would he have turned his life around, or would he have recoiled to his darkened study and tugged at the drapes until they touched before clutching his money even tighter? The opportunity for change would have been lost, the chance for redemption spoiled. But today it’s not the 27th, it’s just the third. And today it feels to me as though summer is over, except that it isn’t. It hasn’t even started. I’ll try to change my ways before the regret of August has a chance to overwhelm me. I think you should do the same.