(Picking a creekside blackberry for Silas on our way home from errands)
What a mood swing of a summer, eh? I have Gen Z on my mind and searched YouTube for that old JibJab video from 2004, when some of us elder millennials could vote for the first time. I can still smell the air of my college campus freshman year, hear the mix of dialogue on the way to class. We were still giggling about the “hanging chads” of 2000. Before smart phones, before social media, the campaign slogans of Bush and Kerry found us and rang in our ears. My roommate was the president of the pagan student alliance and one of the most quirky, smart, wonderful souls I’d ever met. She and I shared a little TV in our room and we fell asleep to election night coverage, waking up the next morning to a newly-elected Bush.
Along with another big fire1 that made national news, we’re experiencing record heat and an outbreak of grasshoppers that supposedly comes once a decade2 or so. Summer on this land usually brings consolation in the form of blackberries and certain flowers which miraculously don’t have part-Swedish blood, like I do; “miraculously” because it strikes me as a miracle that anything could thrive in this heat. But this year The Grasshopper is taking those things.
I’d caution again thinking too long on the grasshoppers, the heat, the fires, or whatever the plague-y things are for you.
“Today’s forecast” is a moot point; once we’re at 105 again, it’s just hot. Don’t tell me 106, 110, 115. Let’s please stop brewing on about it. Our sweat glands sense the agitation and scheme amongst themselves. It’s fine, everything’s fine. Sure have another popsicle. (Did I mention our A/C has been down for almost a month? This is fine, everything’s fine.)
Every day the boys and I have a form of this conversation: “Isn’t it funny how now we CAN’T WAIT ‘til autumn, and when autumn comes we’ll say, ‘We can’t wait to sweat again’?” We can’t wait for Halloween but we remember how our limbs were practically numb at the costume parade, how we couldn’t wait until blackberries again. And here we are, tired of sweating.
Chin up if it’s you, too, googling “reverse seasonal affect” and wondering why you can’t be grateful for summer like a normal person. We’re gonna get through this. And, hey, maybe you’re thriving and doing summer things but hurting in a different way. We’re all humans, human-ing differently. We human differently and we sweat and cry and shower again.
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/28/nx-s1-5055018/california-wildfire-park-fire
https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/grasshoppers-swarming-parts-of-the-valley-and-foothills/article_d8bfeb38-21f9-11ef-b89c-87a6085a01a7.html