Sum, sum, Summertime?

It is difficult to believe that two months ago I was wandering around during Spring Break in Florida, overheating amidst the crowds of Orlando's theme parks. In between water breaks and finding spots of shade, we would seek out the cool air drafted by the ceiling fans that were brilliantly placed overhead in covered lines. Disney is a well-crafted, organized machine and they do pretty much everything right, including Summer.

I can't say the same thing for our Summer so far in New England this year. It has been a delayed Spring of sorts. We have had a day or two of extremely high temperatures punctuated with severe storms; lightening, thunder and even tornadoes. However, the more common phenomenon is the cool sea breeze with misty fog that settles over the seacoast of NH, encasing us in a cloud-like state without a ray of sunshine. Today is such a day, and while I am more prone to favoring temperate seasons and climates, I find myself missing the sun. I miss the warmth it delivers, the gaiety it promises with beach days and pool days. I miss the cook-outs, the beach walks, dinners and drinks on the decks, and running into old friends downtown, whose smiles are extensions of their joy at having the warm sun beating down on them, missed after a long winter and even longer and wetter Spring.

This weather, this extended Spring shrouded in fog, makes me think that you can surround yourself with people, as I have been, but you are as lonely or lonelier then you are alone. There is precious little time that I spend idle at home; my life appears to be en route from one thing to another, a supposed interventionist plan to prevent a state of loneliness. But I catch myself amongst strangers most of the time. Their faces are familiar, their stories carry over from one day to the next, but I don't know them. They don't know me. We haven't shared in those stories or those days together. They aren't my friends. They are just the people I spend time with and I have to wonder why we don't get to spend time with the people we care about more?

I made a concerted effort to plan time with those closest to me. I've eluded to my propensity for plans before. It's a fundamental characteristic of mine, something that needs to be buffered by a partner with spontaneity and a joie de vie. I am eager for Summer to begin so those plans can finally come together - the outdoor movie theater can have it's grand opening, the fire pit can be lit and the laughs will carry on through the warm night air, amidst the tiki torches and late night bocci ball games on the beach. Impromptu picnics on Newcastle common, sandwiches in the park, boatrides on the river, searching for sea glass inbetween chapters of a new book. That is Summer, not this misty cold gray air of strangers that I feel today.