summer

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer _ its dust and lowering skies.

Summer in Pittsburgh had a way of hating you, had a way of beating you down, getting into your bones and thoughts. Only the strongest survived the humidity of Pittsburgh summers, until winter came on and brought with it a test of a different sort, to see who was strong enough to make it to summer. All weather in Pittsburgh had an attitude, forced you to submit to it. Dared you to survive.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.

Hey, I just thought of something.""What?""When we're together, we make one whole Italian.

Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.

It was the twenty-first of June and Bitsy announced a Summer Solstice party.

But, standing in the fading golden sunlight now, I can feel some of the scars of the summer stabbing over. I can feel the promise of a new beginning.

How often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned just a few afternoons long, in the end.As for flying, Dose never even glanced at the sky. Flying was a summer within a summer, a whim. So why think of it at all?

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there.

The outside world might have finally turned into autumn, but inside the Waverley house it still smelled of summer. It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds like true-love hearts.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

And they left the mellow light of the dandelion wine and went upstairs to carry out the last few rituals of summer, for they felt that now the final day, the final night had come. As the day grew late they realized that for two or three nights now, porches had emptied early of their inhabitants. The air hard a different, drier smell and Grandma was talking of hot coffee instead of iced tea; the open, white-flutter-curtained windows were closing in the great bays; cold cuts were giving way to steamed beef. The mosquitos were gone from the porch, and surely when they abandoned the conflict the war with Time was really done, there was nothing for it but that humans also forsake the battleground.

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

August was nearly over - the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children. The days were not hot, but sunny and limpidly clear - the first sign of advancing autumn.

Summer crushes happen all the time, right? Because you feel far away from the real world, everything seems more...possible. Every person seems more vital.

All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer _ one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going _ one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.

The dreamy days and sticky nights of summer were already calling, as if anything could happen.