Summer's Final Bow

My town has the most charming ice cream shop.  It's painted in sherbet colors and has a rick-rack of gingerbread trim.  I don't indulge every day but enough to know the owners who winter in Florida each year.  But our conversations are all too brief during the height of summer when a line snakes out past their picnic tables into a grove of trees.  Still, the ice cream is rich and wonderful and worth the wait.

Have you noticed how some things are most beautiful just before they disappear?  Falling stars, brides who depart for exciting new lives, flowers, and of course, tender seasons that cannot last.  Right now I am enjoying summer's swan song - the air is warm and balmy and the sun is throwing stirring shadows and light;  total eclipses notwithstanding. 

Knowing that summer must soon end, I find myself holding on to it for dear life.  I love the plump native tomatoes in overflowing bins at the market.  As my mother taught me, I eat them like apples as I sit on the front stoop watching juices flow down my arm.  It's ok because the garden hose is still unraveled in the side yard just as it always is until September - I'm a lazy hose-mistress to be sure.  Every Friday, I buy a farm-style bouquet filled with sunflowers and violet asters along with spikes of golden rod and dried beach fronds.  My rustic bouquets don't last as long as the prim blush roses I bought in early summer, but the colors are as warm and bright as October sunshine.

As well, I am getting the most from my liberating wardrobe.  Making sure each morning I select knee-skimming skirts with sleeveless tops or pretty dresses with billowing potential should I still find myself still wearing it when I fetch the recycling bin at the bottom of the driveway every Wednesday night.

As for perfume, I can't stop spritzing my eau fraiche blend that I keep cool in the refrigerator.  It's light and airy and not yet too weak for summer's final bow.  My coral lipsticks, a watercolor silk scarf, and other accouterments still call out to me.  I won't rush the goodbye because the hello takes so long.  

I'm sure I will surrender when summer turns back just long enough to take a final bow.  By then, I'll be longing to light some candles against a dark sky and chilly wind.  And it will seem odd to see the dried leaves flitting and falling on my garden hose.  I'll put that to bed along with the rattan furniture and the clay pots that are holding my spectacular geraniums and begonias which have never looked more gorgeous as they do right now in their vivid hues of reds and pink.  They seem to bloom over and over and over, like the last dazzling firework on July 4th.  

I'll miss the crickets and frogs which lull me to sleep and the dove that coos from a distance late in the morning.  I'll miss the cold gazpacho I finally mastered and the watermelon and corn.  But summer will really be over when the little pastel ice cream shop finally shutters its windows and closes its doors.  They'll put out the scratchy homemade sign that reminds us they will be back next summer.  And each year...I try to believe them.

(Top image by Trent Gudmundsen)