to feel a Southern summer

It feels like summer here in the South. The sun shines nearly every day, the temperatures reaching to the 90’s this week. The air is heavy with humidity, sweat beading up on bare skin within moments of stepping outside. With the heat, the weather has brought those initial feelings of summer. Even with school back in session and working my three jobs, life feels easier, more carefree and natural.

This week has found me stealing hours in the late afternoons, lounging in the backyard with Mayes’ “Bella Tuscany”. While the pups nap in the freshly cut grass, I dream of Italy and devour the poetic prose of this delicious book.

A night out to dinner with a dear old friend whom I hadn’t seen in ages, a perfect evening of bruschetta, cold antipasta, and Italian wine, all in the spirit of dreams. Long conversations sparked the scent of nostalgia and we found ourselves reliving road trips through the desert and hot August nights when the heat left us sprawled atop the thinnest white sheets with fans blasting from every direction. Words took us back through endless delectable meals, the mellow tunes and soulful lyrics that played background to the Spanish poetry we read aloud into the early morning hours. As the years have passed and life has led us in separate directions, it was sheer pleasure to dwell in these memories, if only for an evening.

After two recent weekends of introductory gardening and then reading of all the orchards and groves so intricately described in “Bella Tuscany”, I was inspired to spend my morning studying up on fruit trees and flowers. Lemon trees with their vibrant sunshine yellow against the backdrop of emerald green leaves. Pear trees and peaches, ripened to a juicy sweetness in the heat of summer. Blackberry bushes and raspberries bursting into life with a vibrancy tinged fuchsia. White hydrangeas in their elegant innocence, bromeliads in hues of orange and crimson. And my favorite flower of all, blackened center bursting outward in thick petals of exploding gold. In the image of the sunflower, I can dream for hours, literally feeling the intensified rush of life swell within me.

Reality still greets me in the mornings. Tomorrow promises to be a long day beginning with work at 5 a.m. Books on the ethics and laws of psychology now compete with my stack of memoirs recounting meaningful experiences of life around the globe. But now instead of taking breaks to read a short passage of intoxicating prose or feel a few moments of the sun’s warmth on my skin…instead of taking a break from grading tests and studying and working to indulge in a glass of refreshing wine, I take a break from the books and the sun and the wine to grade a test or study for an hour or go to work. Instead of being stuck in the reality of day-to-day obligations, I am embracing each moment that I can of this dreamy life of simple pleasures.