Most of my life, it seems, I have spent waiting. A real estate based life can be like that: always waiting for closings, waiting for offers, waiting for faxes, waiting for the traffic to clear on the Edens so my 11 am appointment can at least start by noon. I’ve been waiting three years for my back to heal, with only bashful progress made. I’ve been waiting to work on my golf game, perhaps because of my sad back, waiting for a time in my life when I might enjoy the game as much as I see other people enjoy it. I’ve spent a lot of time waiting to go on diets too, and off of them. I carb load on a Sunday waiting to go on a diet on Monday, and the cycle repeats. I’ve waited for many things in my life, though most of the waiting is brought about my procrastination, which is indeed the most vicious form of waiting.
Today, it is summer. There is no more waiting. The summer that left us last September, the one that we waited through November, December, January, that annoying and hated February, then March and sloppy April, past the miserable tease of May, and into a drenched June, the event that we spent all this time living in the Midwest waiting for has finally, mercifully, entirely and completely arrived. There is no more hesitation. There is no more wondering what might be. What could be. There is no looking forward to something, there is only living in that something that has come and surrounded us in heat and breeze. Today, Summer is neither coming or going, it isn’t about to be here or about to leave, it’s just here.
When I was a kid, which is to say when I was the same, but skinnier and less jaded version of myself, I would spend two weeks with my family at a small cabin in northern Minnesota. This was our vacation from our permanent lakefront vacation, and it was splendid. There was something about spending two weeks on vacation. Something delicious. Once arrived, I’d spend each day in a countdown, always fearing the day when the next Monday, or the next Tuesday would no longer be spent on vacation. The first Monday up north, all was well. The mental calendar game told me that a week from that day, the next Monday, I’d still be on vacation. Moreover, I’d still have another full week from that next Monday. I’d play this game the whole time. Tuesday, there was, at first, the next Tuesday, still to be spent on vacation. But then the next Monday did come, as did the next Tuesday, and instead of telling myself that the vacation was intact and it was enduring, because the next Monday I’d still find myself here, in this place with no work and little responsibility, I’d have to imagine the next Monday at home. Where I would be me, but instead of finding myself with a fishing pole in my hand I’d be carrying a weedwhip and my sweat would be caused less by the warm sun than from physical strain.
This game ruined the second week of nearly all of my vacations. I played this game again, as an adult, when I’d spend entirely too long of vacations on the Gulf beaches of southwest Florida. I’d watch the calendar, knowing that this Monday was safe, as was the next, but when that next Monday came, the following Monday would have me back home, in the cold, typing at this computer and grasping for excuses as to why I didn’t call clients back over the last several weeks. The anticipation of the absence of my vacationing pleasure was as painful as the absence itself.
Christmas morning, for a child, is a morning that is looked forward to for months, if not hundreds of days. While I don’t anxiously await presents on Christmas morning anymore, I certainly used to, and the strain of that wait was crushing. I would cross off days, and eat that day’s chocolate, and wait for the next day. And the next. And when Christmas was close, the week of, I’d lie awake and hear my mom downstairs, busily preparing for the morning that I couldn’t hardly wait for. When Christmas Eve arrived, and the first of several Christmas celebrations took place at my Grandmother’s house in Arlington Heights, I knew I was closer yet. The drive home from that party, traveling over snowy roads late into the night, was one of my favorites. I’d fall asleep, and while sugar plums never, ever danced in my head, lead painted Transformers and itchy stuffed Ewoks absolutely did. Once at home and hurried up to bed, the familiar and comforting sound of my mom busy at work, baking and wrapping and preparing for that most anticipated morning was the sweetest of unspoken lullabies.
And when morning came, the culmination of months of greedy waiting, the presents were usually somewhat disappointing, and the whole event looked like a materialistic display that produced nothing but a cheap thrill that lasted mere moments. I would sit, crestfallen with my sweater and apples- yes, apples, my parents gave us apples, and I’d wonder if the next year would be any better.
Summer is like Christmas morning, if Christmas morning lasted for months. The anticipation is no less of a burden, but the reward is so much greater than a couple of giant bruised apples. The reward is one of lifestyle, where clothing changes and attitudes change, and afternoons are no longer spent waiting but doing. Sadly, shamefully, today, there are still some of you reading this who haven’t let your summer have a chance to blossom. Your summer, I imagine, is locked in that very small box that you keep under the stairs in your basement, draped in chains. You hear it once in a while, banging on the inside of that box, screaming even, trying to catch your attention. But instead of realizing what you have crammed in that little dark cage, you just stack more blankets and pillows on top of it, content to ignore that summer until you’re ready for it. The problem here is that summer has an expiration date. It is a finite blessing, one that must either be eaten of and enjoyed in its prime or you’ll be forced to throw it out mere months from now. And with that, the anticipated event, the one you waited all these long cold, wet months for, will be wasted.
My high school years were spent mowing many, many lawns. The sound of my dad walking up the stairs in the morning to wake me is one that still fills my nightmares and causes me to wake with the echo of those heavy footsteps still fresh in my ears, or at least in my mind. He was coming up the stairs to wake me, to tell me that it was going to rain that day, every day, it was always going to rain, and that if I didn’t get up and “make hay when the sun was shining”, I’d ruin everyone’s lives. Everyone was counting on me, and that rain was coming. Always coming. Today, the idea of making hay while the sun shines means something much different to me. I take that saying less literally and more figuratively, with my hay being not a necessity for life but moments of splendor. When the sun shines, I’m going to do everything I can to bask in those rays. I’m going to fight to enjoy this summer while the next Monday still has other Mondays that follow. All these months we’ve spent waiting are now crossed off, and what it is that we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. It’s another Lake Geneva summer, and I’m begging you to kill the excuses and own it while you still can.