Summer Solstice

Today marks the official start of summer and the advent of the Summer solstice,the longest day of the year. At points today it felt like the longest day of the year (she said sarcastically), but in truth, I am appreciative of the official advent of my favorite season. It portends an urgency to wrap your hands around life in all its form. It has a wanton character that entices hedonism, comfort, camaraderie. We do things in summer that seem more careless than at any other time of the year--and we should.

We paraphrase summer in so many ways, but I believe we all personally characterize the season through our own experiences; scents and image memories that symbolically juxtapose the seasons in our own mind's eye. When I draw on my best memories of summer, certain defined moments come to me like fragments of a jigsaw puzzle. You know the puzzle I mean--the one in the back of the hall closet with the edges of the box ratty and the top held to the bottom with a worn rubber band; when you actually construct the puzzle, the critical piece needed to complete the puzzle is missing. It doesn't matter, though, because the front of the box provides you an idea of what it should look like and the pieces that were more vital to framing the rest of the picture have perservered.

It takes little to conjure up those elements snatched from time that symbolize the season for me. Here are a few:

-A lurking blanket of elevated twisting clouds, contorting with visceral energy, darkening as they skulk overhead and eventually erupting with a Zeus worthy passion. The resulting downpour of rain and a violent electric sky exhilarate me. It's Mother Nature with a few drinks in her. I love it.

-"Summer" by War. That sound reminds me of cruising Belmont Avenue with MCFoG when we were teenagers, driving my crappy old Buick Opel. All the kids went to Belmont Avenue in high school and the standard summer uniform was a tube top, shorts, Dr. Scholl sandals and a sassy attitude.

-I'm very sensitive to smell and there are some scents that instinctively make me think of summer-- the smell of eucalyptus from the aged trees so abundant in the place I grew up in; chlorine from a swimming pool; compost, heated to a heady odor in the 100+ degrees in the farmlands of the Central Valley; sweet summer fruit that we'd eat straight from the trees in the orchard; root beer from the drive in we'd go to on the cool dusk of the evening; the smell of sweet grass in the park as we lay in it's comforting embrace watching the changing topography of a clear evening sky.

-Water skiing in The Bell Boy on the lake. My Dad bought an aged ski boat (the kind with the 1950s fins) that we dubbed The Bell Boy. It was an antique and with absolutely no amenities, but we wrought a few good couple of years out of it (which turned out to be its last). The utter serenity one felt while coasting on water skis under the guidance of the Bell Boy on Millerton Lake was nothing short of sublime.

-My Mom's potato salad recipe. As far as potato salad goes, there is nothing to equal it--nothing--and when she died, I got the recipe.

-The syncopated cooing of doves as the background score of a dwindling sweet afternoon.

-The homemade tacos at Estrada's on a Friday night, dressed with a Spanish vinaigrette.

-Making love on the beach in Santa Cruz on a cool summer evening with the Boardwalk ablaze with lights and noise as a serenade (the resulting sand in various crevices, however, was problematic as I discovered later on).

-My brother Marv's performance art demonstrations around the pool at the San Joaquin Suites during our many summer road trips. I believe copious amounts of beer were involved (naturally). And once, lewdly, a raspberry cheese danish. But that's a story for another day.

-The double feature for $1.25 per person at the Moon-Glo Drive In. And for shits and giggles, we STILL snuck someone in by forcing them to ride in the trunk.

-Camp Fresno in Dinky Creek. Whew. That's a blog post in itself.

-The pungent saltiness and churning power of the Pacific Ocean when you plunge into its surf to swim away from the shore.

-Waiting for hours on the curb for the ice cream man to whip around the corner to my street, his maniacal theme song in earshot. I'd patiently wait, clutching my damp quarter, anticipating the culinary dynamics of his superb mixed fruit snow cone.

I could go on, but I'm sure you've had more than enough. What are your key memories that make summer so sweet?