Waiting for the Fall

Summer isn’t everyone’s favorite season

Don’t hate me for what I am about to say.

I’ve had enough of summer.

I understand that this is a minority opinion. I get it that summer is most people’s favorite season. The sun shines brightest in the summer. The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and if you are a student or a teacher, school’s out for summer. (Thank you, Alice Cooper.) “Summer” and “vacation” go together.

For most people, those are positives and reasons to favor summer over the other three seasons (or, if you live in the Northeast, the other season, what with autumn, winter, and spring largely making up one long season with slight variations adding up to the season of “not-summer.”)

For most people, yes. But not for everyone. We don’t all love bright sun, high in the sky, lasting most of the day. We all like sun to some extent, but for some of us, summer sun is gaudy, too bright, even painful to our eyes and therefore to our brains. At its brightest, summer sun is like walking into Walmart, with light that blinds or makes you dizzy. Some of us appreciate the sun more when it is a little lower in the sky, when it casts daytime shadows. We prefer sun with subtlety and nuance.

As for the warmer weather, summer has the warmest weather, otherwise known as hot. Some like it hot, but not everyone. I am no lover of winter’s cold, mind you, but I much prefer the comfort of moderate temperatures in the 60-to-75-degree range with much lower humidity. Summer weather is oppressive to the likes of me, even from the comfort of a cool(ed) house or office. You just know it’s awful out there, and you feel trapped inside. I don’t even like opening the door to let my dog outside. The cool inside air rushes outside and the hot, muggy air rushes in. Even my dog has her limits when it comes to summertime heat and humidity. She will step outside, sniff the air, look around, and turn around and demand to come right back inside and lie down on a cool sofa or dog bed.

My loathing of summer dates back to when I was a child. Summer is the season when parents or camp counselors insist you spend the day outside, playing games and therefore getting even hotter. I was never fond of going out in shorts and a T-shirt; even as a child, I felt it was a fashion faux-pas and made you look like a dumb kid (which of course you were). I don’t mean to offend the vast majority of you reading this who are far beyond childhood and still enjoy going out in shorts and a T-shirt, but to me – for me and me only -- that look is silly and undignified. Long-sleeve shirts and trousers come in light, cool fabrics intended for wearing in warm weather, with the additional bonus of protecting the wearer from the deadly, cancer-causing rays of the sun.

Also, that Alice Cooper song (“School’s Out”) never resonated with me. While I wouldn’t say I was ever a huge fan of school, I certainly preferred it to the oppressive anarchy of summer, with its pressures to do unpleasant things like going camping, swimming (the water is too wet!), lying on a beach (hot! sandy!), and getting eaten alive by mosquitos. I would rather be in school than do any of those things.

Put this all together and the oppression of summer is a recipe for a mood disorder, which I am especially feeling today as the sun shines bright and the dew point is 68 degrees and rising. (For those who don’t know, any dew point above 59 is uncomfortable; 70 is unbearable and even potentially dangerous.) Even as I write these words in the comfort of a cooled office, the sun is blasting through the windows, taunting me, daring me to go outside to “enjoy the summer day.” Hah! I already have a headache just thinking about it. (And I did walk 1.5 miles this morning and came home feeling like crap.)

While I am not obsessed with “productivity,” I find it hardest to focus on anything in the summer and to get motivated to tackle whatever my to-do list says I am supposed to do on any given day. This is a problem, because my work isn’t seasonal: I am as busy or even busier in summer than I am any other time of the year. But I work at home, and when the motivation lags, my bed calls to me. I am an inveterate napper, made even more so by this canine creature who shares my summer lethargy and loves nothing more than lying in bed and napping with a human. They call them dog days for a reason, after all. At least that’s what she says.

Give me autumn. Give me the cool nights and days of dry, crisp air. And give me them quickly, before this horrid summer breaks my spirit and leaves me alone and adrift in this sea of humidity and heat.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

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Roll Call: Founding Members

Anne Fredericks
Anonymous (5)
Erik Bruun
Benno Friedman
Richard Koplin
Steve and Helice Picheny
Rhonda Rosenheck
Elisa Spungen and Rob Bildner/Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook
Julie Abraham Stone
Mary Herr Tally