The Dog Days of Summer Are the Tops
/The Boston Herald
This column was written a long time ago, when my dog, Molly, was alive and my cousin, Xena, was a child, not a mother of two. Before I had grandchildren. Before Katherine moved away. But the first week of August is now as it was then. The Top of the Ferris Wheel. And I still celebrate it every year on August1st. Here’s why:
The dog days of summer are the tops, the best life gets. So on August 1, every year I stop what I'm doing and try to take it all in. The long, hot days. The soft, humid nights. The crickets with their sibilant hiss. The smells of dusty earth and heat. The dog warm to the touch like the outside of an oven.
Natalie Babbitt calls the first week of August the top of the Ferris wheel - and it is. We're on the highest seat, right now, with God laying it all out for us, a kaleidoscope of colors and sights and sounds, hoping, I think, that people will stop and look around and enjoy.
Every day of the year that has come before has led up to these moments. And every day that comes after will lead away. This is the apex, the lull before the ride resumes and leads us on to shorter days and cooler nights and sensible shoes and far more responsibility, shuttling us all the way back to the biting raw chill of winter.
I love the heady, lazy dizziness of now. I love everything about top-of-the-Ferris-wheel-days: steamy mornings, hazy afternoons, airless nights and the stillness that heightens the sense that the world really has slowed down. I love having the windows open all the time. Hearing the birds sing and caw and chirp. Listening to the cars whoosh and the trucks roar and the trains hoot. Catching the shouts of children who ride by on their bicycles and the laughter of young mothers talking to their babies as they push them in carriages.
I love going barefoot and not wearing socks to bed and sleeping not huddled under but on top of the covers. I love waiting in line at the Dairy Barn, because it's worth waiting for a chocolate and vanilla or sometimes an orange and vanilla twist. And I love that it isn't an effort to drive there even when it's late because it's not dark and cold and there's no ice on the road, and 9 p.m., when you're on the top of the Ferris wheel, doesn't feel like the middle of the night.
I love wearing shorts and shirts you don't have to iron. And sundresses you don't have to dry clean. And not wearing a lot of makeup. And sticking a baseball cap on not-so-perfect hair. And not sticking a baseball cap on not-so-perfect-hair because hair doesn't matter when you're hanging suspended somewhere in the sky.
I love the way iced coffee tastes on hot summer mornings and lemonade in the afternoon and margaritas sometimes at night, outside, with salsa and chips. And cold beer right after you've cut the lawn. I love cutting the lawn. I love the hum of the motor and the smell of the grass and the neat way the yard looks when it's done and the fact that the mower actually mulches so I don't have to rake grass or bag it and lug all the way down back.
I love watching my neighbor, Katherine, tend her garden, and I love that she's been teaching me to tend mine, showing me how to thin and divide and transplant, sharing her plants with me and instructing me not to overwater flowers whose names I still don't know. I love the background sounds of baseball, the screams of the kids at Memorial Field, the ping of aluminum bats, the umpires with their deep voices, the Red Sox on the radio in the car and on TV in the house, the familiar thud the ball makes when it hits the catcher's mitt, the roar of the crowd and the sudden silence sometimes, when the crowd collectively holds its breath.
I love the ripeness of everything these days. The showy array of flowers, gardens all lush and full. Trees fat and deep green. Footpaths, bare in the winter, covered with wildflowers now. Big, loud, thunderstorms that wake you in the night, that pound and roar and light up the sky and spill sheets of rain.
I love huge, juicy tomatoes and sweet blueberries and peaches that don't taste like cellophane. And having Xena here because kids make you stop and play cards or go for a walk or drive to the mall. And I love that you can actually get to the mall because everyone is somewhere else, down at the Cape, up in New Hampshire, somewhere, not here, so it's possible to back out of my driveway, even at 5 p.m.
I love eating Fudgsicles and banana Popsicles and hamburgers cooked on the grill, and reading books that are the equivalent of Fudgsicles and Popsicles and hamburgers cooked on the grill, and kicking back and honestly not caring if there's dog hair all over the kitchen floor.
The Ferris wheel pauses for only a while. When it starts up again, it's right on to fall, where you close the doors and a part of yourself, too. Savor these days because they don't last long.
