Summertime
Thoughts on how to live well during towel season
In summer I get the urge to return to certain things, to live in a distinct way apart from other seasons. Part of that ritual is revisiting cherished books and short stories. A Moveable Feast makes the list, so does John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and “Towel Season” by Ron Carlson. A publisher really should put together an anthology of water-themed short stories.
It wasn’t until this year that I realized my go-to summer book opens with foul weather, no sunshine, sandy beaches, or swimming pools. Maybe it’s the fact the book reads like a Paris travelogue that makes me think of summer travel — even if it’s actually full of Hemingway recounting false springs, ski trips, and rain. Or, it could be that I first read the book while at university in San Diego and re-read the book during a summer trip to Europe.
“Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind should strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe.”
I seem to have more thoughts about how to live well in summer than during any other season. I’m sure nostalgia and climate have something to say about that. But beyond affection for the warming months, there is something beautiful about seasonal repetition. It’s how we lend meaning to time’s passing and transition from one stage to another.
Doing particular things at certain times of year feels intentional when compared to the everything-always-available nature of modern living. There is depth created by the well-worn pattern and its seasonal limitation. Via negativa, as I wrote about before. It’s like spending a month in one place instead of visiting a new city every handful of days — you come to know the place. My dream is to buy a family home in Lake Tahoe to never miss an early August, before school starts, trip to the mountains for my family.
Photo by Slim Aarons, featuring Tahoe Taverns, which looks nearly identical today
Tolstoy wrote that “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Every family has a culture, an organizing principle. In my family it is discussing ideas. Sometimes it can be a bit much, the table full of voices running over the top of each other, my ears ringing from the volume later in the night. It could be exhilarating too.
The annual Tahoe trip was the refresher before returning to school, and for my educator parents, work. There would be lively swapping of ideas while on morning walks to get coffee. There would be reading at beaches on the lake. My mom would buy a stack of magazines and these would become fodder for conversation. There are also the types of conversations that only seem to happen when two people have swum out of earshot, floating in water shakes certain things loose. Discussions on balconies under stars.
I’d return home ready for the new school year, brimming with notions. I still look for that feeling when I travel, though it’s harder to come by these days where there is no summer break, nor a return to the new adventure the school year’s beginning ushers in by default.
Life requires respite. It’s like Odysseus trapped with Circe. There is always the temptation to stay, but to stay too long is death. Summer is no different, even the endless string of warm days must end and the key is to savor it to the point you’re ready for its expiration. But each year it returns, and I find meaning in the grooves of summers past.
-Nate
What I’m Reading: The Bohemians by Ben Tarnaff
What I’m listening to: Charlie xcx “Brat”
See you by the pool