Six More Weeks of Summer

I realized one week ago today, the day of the solar eclipse, that I am kind of the seasonal opposite of Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog from Pennsylvania, but instead of forecasting how many more weeks of winter we must endure, I am speculating about summer and how much longer (*shudder*) it could go on.

As much as I try to love all four seasons (because how awful would it be to dislike a full quarter of the year?), I simply have never been able to enjoy summer much. It's blast-furnace hot all day, and just when it starts to cool down, the mosquitos come out threatening everyone with West Nile virus and spoiling the evening. Yes, it's nice in the middle of the night when it's cool and the stars are shining in a mercifully sunless, typically cloudless sky, but I'm usually asleep then.

I remember enjoying summer a little bit more when I was in elementary school and spent every free moment at the community swimming pool. If I got too warm, I just jumped into the water.  If I got too hungry, I bought something at the snack bar with my "underwater tea party" friends. Time flew by at the pool, and life was good.

But one summer hour at home is roughly the equivalent of a whole evening at home during the schoolyear. A teenaged babysitter taught me to crochet one summer -- a skill I probably would not have learned any other time of year. I read a lot of books and drew a lot of pictures and watched a lot of reruns of Gilligan's Island and Leave It to Beaver on afternoon television, but I could only take so much unstructured time before becoming listless. To alleviate the boredom, my family would go to Kansas City Royals games or pile into the car for spontaneous weekend road trips -- most memorably due north from Kansas City to the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. Ahhhh, I loved everything about Wisconsin, especially the cool, dense forests.

In retrospect, I've never really wanted to vacation on a tropical beach anywhere (though I have enjoyed such vacations.)  I've always wanted to go further and further north. Despite seeing wild bears everywhere (one of my phobias), I was perfectly at home in the Yukon Territory. Given enough bear repellant, I could easily summer there.

At least once every summer as a child I visited my grandparents and cousins in Quincy, Illinois, a town surrounded by cornfields on the Mississippi River. It has to be one of the most humid places on earth, with all of the corn "sweating," as corn does, and the deep, slow river evaporating. A short afternoon walk to Zim's for a soda or to Deter's for ice cream was made bearable by the shade of large trees. I remember becoming physically ill at church in Quincy because of this dome of humidity. The Mormon church in town back then did not have air conditioning, and a folded paper fan can only do so much to cool a body down.

I was home alone during the eclipse, so I took a break to sit outside for half an hour and watch the event unfold through a makeshift pinhole contraption that didn't actually work. (Fortunately my neighbor called me over to look through his welding helmet.)

While I sat there baking in the sun I realized how rare it is for me to be outside this time of year. I tend to stay underground, like Punxsatawney Phil, unless forced out by once-in-a-lifetime celestial events.

The bad news is, I saw my shadow, which may mean six more weeks of summer. The good news is that it will then be fall -- my favorite season of them all.

Grief and the Charmed Life

Souvenir shops everywhere sell charms, small amulets you attach to the delicate links of a bracelet to indicate where you've been and what you did there, or what you saw. The small trinkets dangling from the bracelet serve as memory goads to recall past experiences, each one telling a story lest we forget delightful vacations and events that we want to remember.

But what if we received charms for all of our experiences, good and bad? By the time we are old, our bracelets would be heavy and thick and we would clink and jingle with every movement.

All of the charms on our life bracelets would be valuable, but some would be more valuable than others. Some would be small and bright, the stories behind them easily forgotten. Some would be pure gold.

I thought of this analogy today after messaging with a friend who lost her healthy young son to a sudden illness. She will not need a charm to remember this experience, because she misses him every day. She struggles to live without him, and she knows that she will always struggle to live without him. The pangs of grief will likely become less frequent over time, but they will still come, unpredictably and with full intensity. This will happen for the rest of her life. Because of the loss of her son, she has become acquainted with grief, like the Savior himself. And while no one would wish to have a charm like that, it would be impossible to calculate the value of it.

Some quotes on grief: 

I walked a mile with pleasure, She chattered all the way but left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she But oh the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me.  – Robert Browning Hamilton

Grief turns out to be a place none of us knows until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes. - Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. - Thornton Wilder

There is a connection between heaven and earth. Finding that connection gives meaning to everything, including death. Missing it makes everything meaningless, including life. – John H. Groberg

Moving to Mayberry

I’m thinking about moving to Mayberry. I’ve been vacationing there for years, retreating through random episodes of The Andy Griffith Show on the DVR whenever I’ve needed a different time or place or sense or pace. But lately, in the turbulent world of 2017 America, with no where to turn for news and fewer and fewer places to go for entertainment, I find myself going to Mayberry more and more – whenever I’m walking on the treadmill, for example, or sorting socks, or doing any number of mundane household tasks. There is something about Mayberry that is comforting and reassuring and stands in stark contrast with the modern world.

But, you may say, Mayberry doesn’t exist – and  it never did exist. It’s a figment of someone’s imagination. I know, I know, but now it is also a permanent fixture of mine.

I suppose the main thing I love about Mayberry is its people. They’re all characters in every sense of the word. I credit The Andy Griffith Show, along with Mark Twain, Harper Lee, and a few others, with my lifelong delight in quirky characters. And every character in Mayberry is mostly good.

Who could be more honorable and empathetic than Sheriff Taylor? More domestically talented than Aunt Bee? More innocent than Opie? More dedicated and well-meaning than Barney Fife? More long-suffering than Thelma Lou? More devoted than Helen Crump?

Even the show’s troublemakers are endearing, like Otis Campbell, the town drunk who lets himself into jail whenever he’s had too much moonshine.  Or Ernest T. Bass, the hillbilly who throws rocks through windows to announce his arrival in town.

I’d like to sit on the Taylor’s porch on a summer evening and listen to Andy play his guitar. I’d like to go to Wally’s Filling Station to buy a bottle of soda and say hey to Goober.  And I would be delighted to get a ticket for jaywalking from Deputy Barney Fife.

I never saw The Andy Griffith Show on primetime television, but watched it years later in after-school reruns sandwiched between Gilligan’s Island and Leave It to Beaver. Maybe that’s why Mayberry so imprinted on my brain. I must associate it with after-school snacks and perfect peace.

People often complain about the effects of television on young people’s minds, and I would agree that most kids watch too much TV and the vast majority of programs on television are not worth watching, but I am grateful that I paid attention to The Andy Griffith Show. Even as a child, I sensed that it was idealistic, but what is wrong with focusing on the ideal? The ideal may serve as a model for the real.

When the world of 2017 feels inhospitable, even acidic at times, join me in cueing up an episode of The Andy Griffith Show and feel the stress of modern living melt away.