C’mon Summer!

Yesterday I smellled summer. It crept up on me, taking me by surprise. I had all but forgotten its seduction, like bumping into a forgotten lover who makes you giggle in that humiliating way, and smooth you hair, all the while your heart thumps like a racehorse. A definitive warm haze that tastes of overripe grapes, sugary cocktails and suntan lotion, came in through the window and at me.

For me there are only two seasons. summer, and not summer. If I can’t bear my arms in vests all day and night, it’s not summer. I can no more understand a bride who chooses an icy landscape and furry cape, than I can get into the head of Octomom. Summer is about spaces opening up and pushed up windows to let the outside in. It’s about the best fruits, long evenings of crickets peeping and weekends of waves. It’s a time when I can feel my own skin, not the skin or hair of an animal or plant. It’s when I feel the happiness of a naked newborn baby once again.

March was always so bittersweet for me growing up, as it held my Birthday, but also signalled the dipping of temperatures. I can recall moving about on the carpet of my bedroom, the pinched faces of fashion models following me from the walls above, as I chased the final rays of warmth on a day at the end of summer. I always went into denial at the end of the season, until the cold finally won, sending me home clutching blue arms and splotched legs. I hear it is still baking in Cape Town this final week in March. Can’t be “global warming” in light of the stories of record snowfalls all through Christmas in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps we need to come up with a better term like “temperature schitzophrenia”. California is favoured because it is pretty mental in that there are days in February that demand shorts and light sleeves.

I always wanted a life where  I could chase warmth around the globe.

And all this brings me to my final meandering thought which is why we humans spend so much time discussing the weather. The Brits are famous for filling empty silences with chitchat on sunshine dispensation, cloud formations and dew concentration. We make fun of the aging for their propensity to revert to light banter on the weather at a time where they have so much more to teach us. Alan’s family waits up for the late weather slot to tell them how easy tomorrow will be, but they do live in Kansas, land of extremes. As a South African growing up in a place where the seasons are as predictable as knowing the sun rises tomorrow, I cannot grasp the idea of schools closing when it gets too cold. From November to March it is hot with blue skies and warm evenings in Cape Town. The middle of the year brings rain and bone-numbing evenings.

A few decades back when professional sport was limited to the seasons and was not evergreen, there was this TV ad for cricket. It featured girls in bikinis on the sidelines, potbellied men braaing wors on the grassy slopes, Hansie putting zinc on his nose. “C’mon Summer, C’mon, Cmon!” went the song. As much as I love summer, part of me wants it to be put in a box at the end of the season, like it used to be, so I can pull it out with my light, breezy dresses, and get excited all over again.