The Heat of Summer and Writing Assignment #23 - Vacations and Travel

I love being cool. Alas, not Cool as in being “with it” in a way that would impress my teenage grandson… it’s too hard to keep up with the current trends to be that kind of cool.  I mean I love being cool, as in 65 degrees, partly cloudy, wear a sweater in the morning hours cool.

It’s officially summer now, and the heat has arrived outside my door but I’m not letting it in!  I have always given myself a summer pep talk about how the hot summer sun is God’s way of cooking the wheat fields so the bakers can grind the wheat and make their loaves of golden bread but…I’m not buying my own sales pitch today, it’s too hot and I’m miserable.

It has happened to me every year (of my adult life) at this time, I see it coming, I don’t want to accept it, I don’t want to embrace it and I’m certainly NOT going to enjoy it!  

A sudden memory takes me back to a distant summer, when I was 18, I had a dear friend who was blind.  He had been sightless all of his life, he’d never seen anything.  To ask him if he saw white or black was a silly question since he didn’t know the difference between the two.  He was a phenomenal musician however, and his music was vibrant with a full spectrum of colorful emotions. 

He could play a sunset on his piano. Through people's descriptions he recreated Orange played out as a slow moving “adagio” that would then  “crescendo” into an “allegro” and  “forte” Red and transition to a slow solemn “grave” Golden and “decrescendo” to a very slow “largo” and “pianissimo” almost silent Gray.

He could play winter and I would feel cold and his summer would leave me sweltering.   But he didn’t just portray the oppressive heat of July and August, no his music also encompassed the joyful pool splashing frivolity and joy of summer and all of it's colors as he felt them.

I must admit as I look out my window today that the flowers seem to like the heat.  They burst out with their most showy colors and finest greenery, the trees put on their full cloaks of leaves and the animals all seem to be contented all the while I’m grumbling about hot July and wishing for cool October.  

I’ve lived enough summers to know that by the end of August I will have forgotten my disgruntled shift from delicious spring to the oppressive heat of this unwelcomed season and start to entertain the fickle notion that I will actually miss the things that only summer and its heat can bring.

It’s only Day One of the first heat wave of the season but I’ll get a head start and try to "feel" the beauty and complexity of these next few months instead of just focusing on the soaring temperatures. I'll feel it the way my friend did and say “Hello summer, I welcome you and the heat you bring!” And I realize as I make this declaration that like so many things in life, it will come whether I bid it welcome or not. Might as well seek out the golden, shimmering moments with gratitude and anticipation. What's that old saying? "Two men looked through prison bars - one saw mud the other saw stars!"  I can choose my perception of this and of all things.  I think again of my grain baking in the fields analogy and....I'm sold this time.

To kick it off - perhaps in the morning I’ll stop by the new French bakery in the village and bring home a golden baguette.  Don’t you just love summer! 

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #23 - VACATIONS AND TRAVEL

• Start with your summer vacations as a child then move on to your teenage years.

Take the reader with you by recreating the experience. More great word pictures.

• Just keep answering the questions: Who, What, When, Where and Why and How it looked, tasted, felt and sounded!
• Then move on to your adult years. Vacations, travel!  Include photos if you'd like. But keep answering those same questions as above...Who, What, When, Where, Why and How it looked, tasted, felt and sounded!
• Have fun!