Magic days are, just that – magic. Fewer things go wrong, on days like this. More things go right. I hold the notion, on days like this, that some special qualities attribute to the day. Logic tells me this should not be true, but still I feel it – know it; these days are special.
Date with destiny? Who is to know?
First date(day) of summer.
Everything else can wait.
Several years ago I longed for; I ached for, a hot summer romance. I thought about it, wrote about it, wished for it, asked for it . . . but came up empty-handed.
In that wishing there were memories of young days mixed with more recent days; fantastic memories of incredible experiences past, passed by, slipped away – feelings, notions and emotions I wanted to repeat.
You know that kind or time, don’t you, when Sinatra’s words when I was seventeen, it was a very good year . . . ring in memory, fantasy, in time to be . . .
Romantic notions, wishful potions, lands and oceans . . . we seek to find again what we were too young to know and appreciate the magic that slipped through our fingers, eluded our grasp. Each year, again, anticipation . . . exhilaration; too much for some, too little for others. This day has been waiting to happen, for so long . . . now it is here.
Summer heat, young hearts beat, no way to repeat . . . when I was seventeen I had my first dose, came close . . . how sweet it was. You know what I mean, don’t you?
Few calendar days garner attention as do first days of seasons; sure, we mark the holidays and January 1 reverently, and there is little doubt that most mothers anxiously await the first day of school, but first day of Summer is a cut above all the rest.
Longest day, shortest night – harbinger of warm nights and hot days ahead, signal to laugh more outdoors, play more – to expect sunshine and joy at every turn even on the rainy days.
It doesn’t last of course – not the season, the euphoria. In Calgary there is the frenzy of early July known as the Stampede . . . but, it too, once again, shall pass.
Scarcely detectible, from today until tomorrow, will be the small shifting of the earth in orbit; fellow citizens, what is so special about the first day of Summer to make it worthy of special mention . . . is the SUMMER SOLSTICE, which occurs at 11:16AM today (MDT), marking the point at which the earth stops tipping one way, pauses a moment, and then starts tipping back the other way; from this time onward the improved weather and summer heat disguise the reality of days getting shorter again, nights getting longer . . . as the earth has for billions of years. More recently societies of humans have given it higher meaning.
Stories are never simple. Paths, never direct, or short, or easy. Route through life’s maze, is quite simply – a-maze-ing. You, or me – or we – cannot predict our morning, let alone our day or month or season.
Mark Kolke
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