The Last Week of Summer

Here on Cape Ann Summer has a way of showing up sporadically throughout the year. Consequently trying to assign a specific season of sequential weeks is sort of pointless. I have known Februaries when the weather turned mild, the sun shone brightly and, compared to the frigid temperatures of a week or so earlier, it felt like summer. I put the top down and go out to the beach.

But this last week of August, just before Labor Day is always met with a certain amount of mixed feelings in these parts. Those who love summer start mourning it and people like Mark who don’t like summer become unreasonably cheerful. Last night he said, “One more week. One more week and they’ll all go away.” He means the tourists who fill the streets. It’s not so much the travelers who come here from other parts of the country and stay. They are usually pleasant enough. They are on vacation, possibly the only vacation they will get in a year, and just want to relax. No, it’s the day trippers that drive us all crazy. They have 8-10 hours in which to get a tan, see the sights, eat a lobster, and buy a bunch of t-shirts. All of which is fine but they get mad as wet hens at anyone who gets in their way. The pound on their horns at everyone in traffic, are rude and snappish to shop clerks and waitresses, and push past anyone who gets in their way in their single day quest to get everything they want to done — the heck with anyone else. I’ve run into more than my share of them this summer.

So this is a week in which no one gets any work done. No one is in the office and, if they are, they’re in a bad mood about it. But that’s okay. Next Monday is Labor Day and after that things will be beautiful for awhile. The weather will be warm and golden during the day, the nights clear and slightly chilly and filled with the sounds of waves and leaves rustling in the wind. The moon will be bigger and brighter. The sunsets will be slow and brilliant and their color will linger on the horizon and wash across the waves. The baby swans are starting to look like swans as they glide across Smith’s Cove and Niles Pond in their parent’s wake.

Yesterday on the news the Farmer’s Almanac people said that the winter ahead is going to be a bad one — cold and snowy. Lay in supplies. This past winter was so mild that it is hard to remember the winter before which was brutal. I don’t have to commute, thank goodness. I feel sorry for those who do but it seems most of them don’t mind it as much as I once did. So far it looks like I have a busy winter ahead — a book to get ready, three books to promote, quite a bit of work coming in. I’m optimistic.

Right now it is dark and gloomy outside but that is alright too. My friend Lois calls these “time-travel” days. Years ago she and I read a book at the same time in the deep fall of the year. It was Eva Figes’ The Seven Ages and was the sort of book you can curl up with, get lost in and slip through time. Another writer who has let me do that in her books is Diana Gabaldon. The winter in which I read her Outlander series was a cold and nasty one and I was commuting. Every night when I got home exhausted from dealing with cold and traffic, I made pots of tea and got out Gabaldon’s tomes and departed for Scotland. I recently passed my copies of those books on to Mark’s mother and have not yet heard her reaction to them. I hope she loves them as much as I did.

So it is cold and dreary and dark with winter looming in the distance. But between there and now there are golden days filled with light and the fragrance of the sea and of leaves and woodsmoke and apples. Everything is beautiful and life is amazing.

Thanks for reading.