Searching for summer

It’s June 9, and so far it feels like the most un-summery summer that ever (didn’t) summer. I wake up on June mornings, shivering and reaching for a hoodie, the same way I do on every other morning of the year, and although I’ve been swimming several times, I have to tell you that it’s not much fun because the water has been icy. Like cardiac event-inducing cold. Like break the surface of the water with an ice pick cold. I swam the very first day that the pool was open and afterward, it took me hours to warm up. That might have been a little bit of self-induced hypothermia, now that I think of it.

Like mostly every other place on the northern half of the Atlantic seaboard, we also had several days of smoky haze, the result of wildfires in Canada, which - look at a map - is NOWHERE NEAR HERE. At first, I ignored the warnings about the terrible air quality and took my usual walk on the track at the base, and then the next day I woke up feeling like I’d been attacked by every upper respiratory virus in existence. Scratchy throat, watery and itchy eyes, sneezing and coughing - I took a COVID test just to be sure but it wasn’t COVID. It was Canada. They need to get their forest fires under control. 

*****

It’s Saturday now, an early June Saturday, bright and sunny and warm, with a swim meet (time trials, but it still counts) in the morning and a graduation party in the afternoon and all seems right again with the summer world. It was cold this morning, cold enough that I needed to wear my team jacket while performing my refereeing duties. But I like my team jacket, so that was kind of a bonus. The water that splashed me as the swimmers dove in was freezing cold. Those kids are tough, I tell you. But the air is clear, the smoky haze all but gone. We’re on the brink of civil war and I still have to maintain vigilant situational awareness to avoid unwanted (is there any other kind) encounters with bears and coyotes, but at least one thing is normal. There’s no freedom like the freedom of a Saturday in June. 

*****

For weeks, every day  has dawned sunny and bright, though much cooler than I would like; and every afternoon has been just like the afternoon that surrounds me right now - balmy and nearly still, the trees just barely rustling, the skies a pale bluish pinkish golden glow, nothing but birdsong to disturb the peace. 

*****

Did I say that it hasn't seemed like summer? It's June 21 now, the first day of meteorological summer and it's raining and windy, which makes it feel like it's about 55 degrees.  It's 66 according to my weather app, so it's already stupid cold for June but the rain and wind are reminiscent of late October. I can smell the pumpkin spice. And I hate pumpkin spice. 

I also smell chlorine, because it's Wednesday night so I'm at a swim meet that should have been cancelled but wasn't because we're tough and we're not going to let a little rain and wind stop us, right? I feel like punching someone right now, but I won't. I'll just write about wanting to punch someone. That'll make me feel better. 

I'm wearing a hoodie and a rain jacket. So are all of the adults. The swimmers are in their suits, wrapped up in already wet towels, huddled under tents, hoping for thunder. "That was thunder, right? No, it was a plane." I'm all for an intrepid spirit of can-do gung-ho damn the torpedoes full speed ahead toughness but this? This is just crazy.  

*****

A day later, now a full day into official summer and it's still cold and raining but not as cold and not as rainy as yesterday. Things are moving in the right direction. Things are looking up. 

We finished the swim meet by 8 pm, cleaned the place up in record time and I was home in my pajamas with a cup of hot tea by 8:45 PM. That's the nice thing about being cold and wet. If you're lucky, you get to eventually be warm and dry and that’s a nice contrast. 

And so this crazy year continues, bears and coyotes roaming freely through the DMV suburbs (my neighbor scared the coyote out of her yard, where it was eyeing her chickens), wildfires raging and sending plumes of smoke thousands of miles south and east, boiling heat in Texas and early November weather in the smack dab middle of June here in Maryland. My youngest child graduated from high school and already attended his college orientation and we'll be packing him up to move out in no time at all. I swam last weekend but I think I'll be out of the pool for at least a few days. The water just keeps getting colder.