I didn't hear the song a single time this summer, but it played in my head anyway, buzzing around like a pesky bee: "Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer." Nat King Cole's smooth-as-honey voice trailing me all the way through June, July and August. Most years summer never lives up to this song. This year the song didn't have a prayer of living up to summer.

“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 in 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. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring moons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after." - Natalie Babbitt

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."

I scrub the grout on the kitchen floor with a toothbrush, scouring with a paste made of Cascade and water, while, I know an army of ants munches away at the walls, the beams, the very foundations of my house.The ants will have to wait until later. I scrub the grout for hours, get half the floor done and then get distracted and involved in something else…

I find myself lingering over the travel section in newspapers these days, dreaming of all the places I'd like to visit, pausing at photographs of breaking waves and sandy beaches and gardens in bloom, stopping to reread sentences like, "In parks and plazas, Boston wrings pleasure from longer, warmer days." "Wrings pleasure." It's a nice image, an interesting juxtaposition of words.

In the church calendar, these days are called "Ordinary Times" - life as usual, without anything "extra" ordinary. The church is neither looking forward to nor back at Easter or Christmas. Therefore the name "ordinary."

But it is a great misnomer, for these days are anything but ordinary. They are long, lush, lazy, lovely summer days, the best days, the most extraordinary days of the year.

My daughter calls these days "The Februaries," an apt word for the dead-of-winter mood that is heavy, like snow; that presses hard on hearts, that is like ice on a roof, an unnecessary burden.

The Februaries - a time of restlessness and melancholy and longing; a month to be to endured, not enjoyed. Unless you ski, or skate. Unless you vacation in Colorado, or New Hampshire, or Vermont. (It's beautiful up here, a friend says, calling from a ski lodge. It's been snowing for 24 hours.) Or unless you escape to somewhere warm, where February isn't. ("You should come to Florida, Mom," my son says.)

We are talking about going to bed early and pulling the covers over our heads and closing out the world and hibernating until May.

Only it's just talk. We can't hibernate. Morning comes; the clock says it's morning, but it's hard to tell. The day is gray. Our mood is gray. The trees are bare, black, bone thin. We are bone-weary. Burdened.

It's cold. It's damp. Thanksgiving looms. Then it's Christmas with all the shopping, spending, racing. For what? For whom?