Here's to overthinking summer
Including the only reference to Yoko Ono you'll likely ever see here
For all of you reading (or deleting) this newsletter in the hemisphere from which it originates (Western? Northern? Left? - I frankly wish I had not brought it up), you’ll know that summer is upon us!
Alright - for those who I know will be all over that statement like bagel butter on a middle-aged man’s cargo shorts, I know that summer does not TECHNICALLY start until late June. But, tell that to my kids, who mentally began their summer vacations three weeks ago, or Kroger, who is huddled back behind its dairy walk-in, busily getting its Halloween display ready.
For all practical purposes, summer is here! And I, for one, can’t be more . . . conflicted.
On the one hand, we have some cool things to look forward to this summer break, particularly a few trips (not always all of us at the same time - that’s insane). My wife and I head to Europe to spend some time with her brother and his wife. Our kids go with grandparents on various get aways. My wife and daughters head to the DR for a mission trip with my wife’s work. My son and I take a trip to Florida to celebrate his 13th birthday, a tradition we unfortunately gladly started with my daughters when they turned 13, simpler times when you could rent a car for a few bucks a day, hotels were going cheap on Priceline, and you didn’t have to sell your wobbly ottoman on Facebook so you could treat yourself to a Zagnut every once in a while! (Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It was as wobbly desk, and I prefer a Payday bar, but only the standard size - I’m not a Rockefeller, and the desk was wobbly, like I said).
While the cost of travel is generally heartbreaking (when my wife tells me how much a given plane ticket or Airbnb would be, my work persona kicks in and I want to ask, “Is that in Yen? What project are we charging that to? Who has to be fired for this to make any sense?”), the travel will be a highlight, I think, and is shaping up to be a theme of the summer. YOLO! (“Yoko Ono LOVES Oranges”???)
No, the confliction, I think, comes from a few realizations related to the fleeting nature of all of this (YOLO, indeed). And how things have changed, as they tend to do.
When I was a kid, summer seemed to revolve mostly around “being” and less around “doing”, if that makes any sense. (I’m not an “existentialist” in most senses of the word, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it.) In those bygone summers, we traveled and played baseball and went to church and visited family in town. We had chores. We even played what passed for video games those days.
We were “doing”.
But my overarching memories revolve around being - being home, being outside, being in a pool or a sprinkler, being at a friend’s house, being called in to eat or to mow the grass or help pick some berries from the garden. Being together in the living room at the end of the day, watching a video we all picked out at the local video store (which was actually an old house, and in retrospect, based on the vibe, was certainly the scene of at least one violent crime.)
Even though there may have been as much summer activity then as there is now, it FEELS like we are on the move now more than ever before, and cannot just “be”. In a sense, we were more “passive” back then, allowing the summer to unfold around us and acting accordingly.
Maybe in the spirit of the words of Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding from THE feel-good movie of the 90’s, The Shawshank Redemption, we were not just busy, but busy living (And certainly not busy dying. Man, another thing I wish I would have not brought up, get your references together man!)
I know time has a way of compressing upon itself to distort memory. I know it was not as idyllic as it is in my nostalgia-addled brain. But I think it was very good.
Just as this current summer also promises to be good.
Good but different? Maybe that’s it.
In any case, one ramification of the busyness of even a good summer is that I know it will pass in a blink. Perhaps overall, the reticent attitude toward the summer is knowing that it will be over before we know it. Perhaps one day I’ll look back and pine for the summers of the 2020’s, when we only had fifty things on our calendar and when you could still buy a wobbly desk from a complete stranger without being murdered.
Perhaps.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to be there they put out the Halloween displays - I have this desk money burning a hole in my otherwise empty pockets and Paydays are not getting any cheaper!
