It is August 25. Sunday. I awake at 5. It’s dark outside and there’s movement in the kitchen next to my room (the living room). Surely my sister (I hear the rotor of the Keurig and my sister’s dissipating will to live). It takes me a moment to remember who and where I am. I am Damien, a pizza loving teacher-platypus. It’s then I want to burst into tears.
As I have come to realize, the summer is broken up into about 4 seasons. And as all seasons change, they bring about a soul-crushing sadness that can only be cured by hours of situation comedies and salted meats in between complex carbohydrates.
Summer season 1 starts in June. My semester has just ended but I am still working. The summer is ahead of me. The weather is warm enough to wear shorts, but comfortable enough to use pants to hide my chunky thighs. The beer gardens are open and the joy is unbridled. It is the season of the happiness that exists before the happiness begins – it is the Christmas Eve of the summer seasons.
Summer season 2 starts when I go on holiday at the end of June. A week in London. We walk around and I have left my laptop at home, thereby forcing myself to enjoy the trip. No work. I can relax. I visit cafes in the morning for my coffee and breakfast treat du jure. I worry little about the constricting waistband. I walk. Camden. Covent Garden. Trafalgar Square. I can look ahead at after-London and still be happy. At this point, I am moderately carefree.
Summer season 3 is in the interim between London and my trip home. These are the work-a-bit and project days. I clean out my storage room and enjoy AC. At this point we begin speaking about London as though it had occurred six months before. It is also at this point that I realize in a panic one day that my summer is slipping away from me and it will be gone before I know it. I then wonder if this is a metaphor for something else, but get to a beer garden just in the nick of time to swat away any encroaching thoughts that may lead to discomfort. As long as my August trip to Langhorne is in front of me, I am well ensconced in summer.
Summer season 4 is my month-long trip to the U.S. It is broken into 7 mini-seasons. The first of these mini-seasons is the flight home to the U.S. My mood is light, I am joking with other passengers. I watch movies and dream of the cheesesteak I will have within hours of landing. On my flight my mantra is such: enjoy this long-ass flight. I try, but it is a long day. I arrive at the airport and am as relaxed as a person whose mommy and daddy will buy them dinner. Mini-season 2 is an event that takes place in the first week (my sister and I go to a Tom Papa show in Atlantic City where we swim in a pool with the beautiful people and eat our weight in scallops).
The third mini-season is the ten days after that when I can wile away the summer days in the country. I get up at 5 and have a coffee with my mom and sister. We watch Morning Joe. In the morning I write and work and then go for walks and watch baseball and British murder TV with my dad. Mini-season 4 is an excursion wherein I go to a Phillies game with my brother and get accused of infractions by a mythical Jeremy. I show my EU residence card to a bartender who says that I look like an aging French revolutionary. I am fully enjoying my awayness, the offness I ooze in my permanent wardrobe of sandals, loose shorts, and light golf shirt. I spend my time at home, but on occasion hit a local bar. More often I go to diners and the community pool. I have not worn underwear in six weeks. Whether this is due to a dedicated relaxation or because my diet has rendered them a tourniquet to my lower half is a fact that I will carry to the grave.
Mini-season 5 is G Day, the weekend I spend with my sister in which we eat pizza, get massages, and go to her local bar for happy hour. We do a walk around Valley Forge and talk about George Washington and whether or not he suffered from hemorrhoids. (Our consensus – yes). Mini-season 6 is before our trip to the beach. My dad and I have reached ultimate routine level. We have dinner and then retire to the drawing room for a Midsomer Murder. These are paused for the Phillies and then put back on after. We talk books, movies, and breakfast foods.
When the shore comes (mini-season 7) I am forced to acknowledge that I am barrelling towards the end of the summer. It’s right there over the horizon as I stare into the ocean. Late August at the Jersey Shore. London is a distant dream. Even the details of G Day can be told as ancient narrative saga. The once-vibrant bees are now fluttering and dying on the sidewalk. How can September be less than two weeks away? It seems intentionally rude. People at the beach are in a state of happiness – how can they not be? Seemingly only I can see the pink evening light and frown; only I can experience the rhythmic wash of the waves on the beach and choke up; only I can hear the call of the gulls as they’re torn to pieces by hired falcons and be sad.
The drive home from the shore is a tough one. Season 4 ends when I get home. Once there, Dad and I eat sandwiches and say things like ‘well you have three more days!’ and ‘It’s been a nice trip’. We keep up our routine – Midsomer Murders and Phillies baseball – but it’s fleeting. The days end sooner, both for me and the residents of Pennsylvania. When at the beginning of the summer the sun was up, by 4:45 now it’s dark until after 6. In June it was light until almost 10, and now it’s dark at 8. Boo, I say. Boo.
And so, now, I wake up on August 25 and face the end of the four seasons of summer. The crushing reckoning of the end of a great time. Everyone’s sad. They all returned from the shore the day before. School starts at the end of this week. It’s a Sunday, the Big Guy’s least favorite day. (Even He likes the day before the day off better than the day itself, this is why all the best TV is on Saturday.) I join my sister in the kitchen for a coffee. We chat. I am packed and my bags are heavy. The day flies by a minute a second, an hour a minute. My flight home is dark and depressing, made more so by the fact that a lot of people on my flight are happy because they are going on a trip to Europe. I am going home at the end of the summer.
Who are these psychos who can feel content at the end of a great summer? Galling. The four summer seasons and they’re seven mini-seasons have come to its more-or-less end. What is there now? Labor Day? Please. Maybe there are people who consider Labor Day week and its sad little free Monday as the summer’s last season, but most of us know it’s part of the pre-autumnal season. School is back. Nights are cooler. A trip to the store for school supplies renders the summer over. I have accepted it. And I will enter this pre-autumn with kind of tanned skin, a straining waistband, eight seasons of Midsomer Murders under my straining belt, and a mild-to-moderate scallop addiction. Bring on Autumn and its one bland season.
