Catching hold of summer fantasies
‘You have grey hair and your kids are gone and all your money is gone’
ON the longest day of the year someone told me it was the longest day of the year and it hit me rather hard for such an obvious piece of news. I think I had been thinking that the whole summer was still ahead. And suddenly you realise that things have peaked, and it’s all downhill from here. Before I know it the mornings will get progressively darker and then we’ll be into Christmas, and sure you might as well give up then.
I love the summer. I love it more than anything. In reality it’s probably the idea of the summer I like. The truth is that I am stuck in work for most of the summer. Indeed, sometimes, I work even harder in the summer. I make up for it by getting up early, and trying to squeeze in some life before work. And I try to be grateful for every scrap of it I get. I take a 99 whenever I can. I never miss an opportunity to have a drink sitting in the sun. I take off as many clothes as possibly at every available opportunity. I go barefoot as much as possible. I try to get Mark who cuts my hair to shave it all off, though we usually end up meeting in the middle somewhere. I love to hit the road as well, to get out and about around the country with music playing in the car. I even got a gas barbecue this year so I could barbecue at every available opportunity. I went four days on the trot recently, every week night, until my wife pleaded that she could take no more meat and the children starting eating pasta before I arrived home just to avoid my porcine tyranny.
But I don’t get to do enough of any of it. Because summer is like life. It’s what happens when you’re making other plans, and doing other things. And it flies. It flies faster every year. It probably doesn’t help that in this country it can be over before you know it’s begun.
I am choosing to see it as just having begun. I am choosing to imagine that summer is July, August and September, that it’s all ahead of me. Just like I choose now to think that life truly only begins at 47, that 50 is nothing to be afraid of and is in fact the new 30, that guys might have seemed old when they hit 50 before, but now 50 is the start of a new golden age.
I met an older woman at Seapoint the other day and she told me it was her last swim there for a while, she was off to the mountains in America. I said ye have a great life. And she said yeah, but to live this life you have to put up with grey hair and your kids are gone and all your money is gone. Ageing is shit, is what she was saying. But I can’t choose to believe her. I have to keep my fantasies of the autumn years just like I have to keep my fantasies of summer. I have to believe I will be around and I will be free to do what I want to do, to make the most of summer, to get up early to swim and then breakfast on tea and cake by the sea. I have to believe I will travel. I have to believe that people will still want to be around me. I have to believe that I will still get something out of reading or watching or the papers or sitting in the sun. And I have to believe that the reality of it all will be as good as the fantasy, that I won’t just be angry, that the fact that I am getting older, and it’s flying by faster and faster, and that I am going to die, doesn’t take the good out of it all. We must guard against bitterness at all costs.
In the meantime, how can I prepare for this? By being grateful for every second, for every sunny day, for every hour of peace, for every summery bite of food, for every time I have eaten most of the 99 and it’s just down to the stuff that is packed into the cone, with the flake still there, and then you get crunch and cold and hardened flake. Grateful for every time you can cycle a bike in shorts and feel warm air, grateful for every time I can get a spot in the sun and feel that first cold beer hit the back of my throat, grateful for every time I hear the kids laughing as they spray each other with the hose and every time I see them running around busy and delighted in their little shorts. Grateful for every road trip with them and their stuff for the road carefully curated and gathered in the back seat, their meticulous preparation. Grateful that they are still innocent enough to want to bring Cutie the bunny and her bed. Grateful for a walk with a friend without rain, for all those moments of connection that keep us from drowning. It’s all flying past and I need to catch hold of as much of it as I can.