Just around the corner is summer's end

St. Petersburg Times (Florida)

BEVERLY BECKHAM

"Christmas is around the corner," I overheard my mother tell a friend when I was 4 or 5 and lived in the city. I raced into the hall and grabbed my red jacket and hurried down three flights of steps out to the sidewalk. "Don't you go out of the yard," my mother shouted and I yelled, "I won't, Mom" and, of course, did bolting up the street to get to the corner where she said Christmas would be.

It wasn't there, of course. No tree. No Santa. No reindeer and sleigh. Just concrete and macadam and three-decker houses lined up on either side.

It was my first disappointment with looking around corners.

Learning from experience, I've tried to avoid the practice since. I don't plan. I don't think "next week, next month, I'll do this." I live in the moment. The moment is all I can manage.

Still, each August, despite my resolve, I always steal a peek around that corner. The maple leaves fringed in red urge me there; September lurking in the shadows, playing hide and seek in and out of August days, provokes me to peek. So I do. I give in, tiptoe to the end of the month and glance, just glance … and wish immediately that I hadn't.

I looked this morning, while riding my bike. September was there, ahead of me, beckoning. I blew out my breath and could see it, then turned my head and saw it all: October, November, December. Shorter days, colder nights. Wool coats. Sturdy meals. Closed windows. Hot tea.

Put away the bike. Get back in the car. Trade in the rake for a shovel. The fan for a heater. The grill for the kitchen stove.

It's time for a change, people say. We've had enough of summer. Fall and winter are much cozier times.

But I don't see cozy. I look around that corner and see the days shrinking, like a noose being tightened around us all. I tug at closed windows and am sad because I can no longer hear the birds. I dress in wool clothing and block the air from my skin. I

n the cold, no one lingers outside to talk. In the dark, even a short trip to the store seems a journey. What is there to like about the changing of the seasons? What is there to enjoy?

Every morning, all summer, the day has been up before I am, dressed and waiting though it is only 7 a.m. when I arise. Every morning, I have been a pampered guest awakening to a crow's caw, to the hoot of an owl, on the warmest of days, to the music of crickets.

It's easy to get out of bed on summer mornings because summer makes it easy. It isn't dark. The floor isn't cold. A shower doesn't feel like medieval torture. The world is a comfortable place.

But in the fall, it's cold and you have to wear socks and the crickets don't make music - and even if they did, the windows are closed, anyway.

Yes, but the fall. Don't you love the fall with its warm days and cool nights? Don't you love the changing seasons? Don't you love it when your kids go back to school?

No. I don't like any of it. I mourn the passing of a season that makes occasions of the simplest things, a time in which a patch of dirt turns into a garden, and a barbecue becomes a royal feast.

An article in the newspaper gives me some comfort, tells me I'm normal, says that these end-of-summer blues are the result of leftover childhood emotions when September was a dreaded time, burdened by the end of freedom and the restraints of school.

Unfortunately for me, this isn't quite true. I looked forward to school with its wool sweaters and new shoes and clean three-leaf notebooks. I couldn't wait to see my friends, to have a new teacher, to beginning a new year.

But I want to believe the article because it says these end-of-summer blues won't last long. Experience is shouting a different message, of course, but I'm not listening. I'm reading the expert's advice. Get plenty of rest. Exercise and maintain good eating habits. Plan a fun activity. And stay active. Then the passing of another summer won't be so difficult.

It wouldn't be difficult at all if I hadn't looked around that corner, if I'd waited for the summer to end to grieve. But I broke my own rule and now, no matter how I try, I can't seem to think of today in isolation, as a day complete in itself.

Instead, sadly, regretfully, I see it as one of the last golden days in what has been the most golden of recent summers.