Silliness
Summer afternoon. To the writer Henry James, “those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” I can find no flaw in his statement.
Summer afternoon. Those words carry a different meaning depending on your age. For a child, all of summer is one long, hot, lazy afternoon stretching out apparently forever until it suddenly collapses in on itself in the week before school starts. Summer, for a child, is catching tadpoles in the brook and leaping over the lawn sprinkler and riding a bicycle for a thousand miles and chasing after fireflies in the evening and still not wanting to come in when momma calls.
Summer afternoon. An adult’s summer afternoon hovers somewhere between a wish and a memory. The memory of a picnic served from a wicker basket on a red-checked blanket laid in the shade of old oaks. Of watching a thunderstorm build and break on the horizon, the dark clouds piling up, the rain slashing down below them. Of a long, hot, lazy afternoon at the county fair, holding hands with somebody you once desperately loved. Of sitting under a striped Cinzano umbrella, drinking something cool and talking with friends. The memories of a younger self…and the wish that this summer will somehow magically be like those in your memory.
Summer afternoon. It calls for you to be a child. It always has. You can answer, if you want. You can; it’s not too late. The afternoon is just starting.
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