Weather undergound

Do you know how when you’re writing something and the words just come easily and the sentences flow naturally from the words, forming well-constructed paragraphs, each building on the next until you have a page or pages of sharp, funny, clear, insightful prose? 

No, I don’t either. I’m trying to write two different things at once and I can barely choke a word out of myself. 

Maybe it’s the weather. Today is the first summer-hot day of 2021. I always forget how much I love hot weather until it finally arrives. “90 degrees,” I think, when I see the forecast. “I’m so pasty, and my feet are a mess. I’m not ready for shorts and sandals.” But then a summery day dawns, bright but hazy and soft, and I feel like I can just melt into the day, like I don’t know where I end and the summery air begins. In front of a computer screen is no place to be today; no place to be at all. 

*****

But outside is no place to be either, not if you live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, just above ground from the subterranean home of Brood X. Because when you’re outside, if you’re not dodging live cicadas, then you’re side-stepping dead ones. The dead ones are worse. That’s one of the things I’m writing about. Cicadas in general, not just dead ones, though I can tell you that I have plenty to say about dead cicadas. 

It’s Sunday now, another hazy soft summer day, though it’s not really summer yet, not officially. Memorial Day is still a week away. My son and I are watching “Field of Dreams,” and we’ll watch a real baseball game later today, Nationals vs. Orioles. Yes, I know that I’m supposed to be boycotting the Nationals because of the stupid, no-sense, no-reason handbags rule. But it’s summer now, or practically summer. My fighting spirit evaporates in the summer, like morning dew on the grass on a hot day. 

*****

That was short-lived. I’m sitting through a Zoom class for swimming officials (time to recertify) and I’m wearing a sweater. The temperature dropped 25 degrees overnight, and a blazing bright Sunday gave way to a rainy, cool, Seattle-like Monday. The Nationals beat the Orioles yesterday, but the Capitals went down in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs last night, for the third straight year. Hockey season is over, but spring is not giving way to summer just yet. Not without a fight.