Summer: It's a state of mind

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It will take work this year. It won't come automatically. The temperature is too cool and the mood too hot. The world, always unsafe, feels even more so. Bad news stalks us, and there's no place to hide.

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless and hot."

This is the way August is supposed to be, the way Natalie Babbitt described it in her children's classic, "Tuck Everlasting." August is "blank white dawns and glaring moons, and sunsets smeared with too much color," a garish, carnival ride, a needed intermission from daily life and endless problems and feet planted solidly on the ground.

August is supposed to be magical.

But here it is the top of the Ferris wheel right now, and I don't know about you, but I'm still sitting on the ground waiting for the ride to begin.

There was no balmy spring this year and autumn's chill seeped into July. Bad news poisoned the air and there is no respite from it. It continues. It's everywhere, on TV, in the newspapers, just outside the door.

There have been no breathless days, or carefree ones either. No slowing down, or letting down. No sweltering nights spent sitting on the porch, no windows open with the curtains still, no loud cricket songs, no tall glasses of lemonade, no blank white dawns.

Instead it's been as gray and grim as November. Mornings dawn reluctantly, like a man with a hangover. The birds, the flowers, the grass, the trees - they're all doing their part. The birds sing, the flowers bloom, the grass thrives even in chronic bare spots, and the trees are August green.

But old man summer holds his head, and you can't tell if he's smiling or crying.

I'm going looking for that smile this week. Maybe it's been there all along and I just don't see because of where I'm standing. Maybe the calliope is playing and I just don't hear because of the world's incessant screams.

Maybe the Ferris wheel is spinning and is slowing, and if it is I want to get on the ride because I want to slow down, too.

So I'm going to New York to pick up three little kids and run away with them for a while. I'm going to turn off the radio and put in a tape and all the way from their house to mine, we're going to sing children's songs. "Old McDonald," "Found a Peanut," and "Bert and Ernie's Best."

And we're going to tell stories, made-up ones, where the good guys always win and everyone knows who the bad guys are and princes marry girls they love and couples really do live happily ever after.

We're going to stop when we're hungry for french fries and chicken fingers and ice cream, never mind that these things aren't good for us. And when we get home we're going straight to the movies to see "Matilda" and then we'll re-read "Matilda" and later, if we're hungry again, we'll get pizza with extra cheese.

We're going to drive to New Hampshire to Storyland and see Little Bo Peep and Red Riding Hood, then stop at my friend Anne's to meet her new dog, Rosie, whom she's had for months. And Anne will take us walking in the woods and we'll probably have a picnic there because that's what Anne and I used to do when our own children were small.

And in the woods, in the quiet broken only by children's voices and children's needs and a dog's thumping tail, maybe I'll hear carnival sounds and taste dusty earth and smell popcorn and feel at last the heady heat of summer, and if not the heat, at least the warmth.

And as the Ferris wheel pauses, at the very top of the summer I will pause too and, if I'm lucky, I will see summer's smile.