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The Summertime Blues
Is there a cure?
In 1958 singer Eddie Cochran released a song titled “There Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Blues,” and if I were to pick a song that is emblematic of this time of year, this would be it.
There has always been something disquieting to me about late summer. It is almost a season unto itself, a span of time that covers roughly the middle of July to the middle of September. The flowers and fields are in full bloom. The leaves on the trees have gone from brilliant yellow-green to a deep green. The dog days descend in a suffocating haze of heat, causing lakes to become blanketed with algae and pond scum.
It is a time of waning, where baseball ends and football begins, where the leaves on the trees tip Nature’s hand and give a glimpse of the Fall to come. Kids soon realize that another school year is on the horizon, and parents realize their child is another year older. Last year’s school clothes suddenly look ancient and will soon be replaced with the new year’s fashion.
As a small child, the unfolding of seasons was something I simply experienced without thinking about it. I never gave any thought to what season it was, how long it lasted, what lay ahead, or even what month it was. I experienced late summer firsthand in what Thoreau called “living deliberately.” I ate the clover and the wild raspberries and blackberries. I caught butterflies and frogs with my net. I watched the bloom of the tiger lilies. All that existed was what was in front of me. Summer never really ended so much as it evolved into Autumn. It was a much simpler world.
I learned there was a definite end to summer after I started school. For the first time in my life, there was something on the horizon, something for me to anticipate, something that marked the end of something else. There were clothes to buy, and a new setting that would be unfamiliar to me. There would be a new teacher, some new students, and new relationships. Knowing that was coming drove home the idea that summer was finite and that the days of one season just blending into another were over. There were now lines drawn in my world.
In those early days of grade school, late summer mostly meant the children's summer program was ending. There would be no more softball in the morning or swimming lessons…
