Endless summer

So how was your summer? It's the 4th of July, a date which will always mark the end of summer somewhere in my mind's consciousness. Old family sayings and pearls of wisdom can do that to you. This was my mother's. She used to say that July 4th to her was always the end of summer. I don't know why other than it was just another example of one generation handing its psychosis off to another. Thanks.

Face it, don't you feel just a bit of melancholoy on June 21? You're just getting cranked up with the good weather and all of a sudden the days start getting shorter. And, sure, you still have a great time, but it's a great time of the "last dance before shipping off to war" kind of great time. The sun has a date with Brazil. And you've got a snowblower to fix.

It was a lot easier to reconcile when I was a kid and was in school. The end of summer was when school started again. Then one grows up and is deprived forever of the first day of school and, thus, there is no way to mark summer's end. All one is left with is one thing one mother said on one day.

Maybe that's the real reason I've taken two months off from work. One more summer, one more time.

July 4th be damned.