I think today would be my grandmother’s 110th birthday. Anyway, it’s that day of the year my thoughts turn to her because I’m about to hull my first pint of strawberries for the season. My grandmother loved strawberries and often served them, syrupy and warm, over angel food cake for “lunch” (the meal you have at 2 p.m. when the men come in from the field before evening chores). I’m serving this pint, cleaned and lightly sugared, over slices of cheesecake that has a loose graham-cracker crust to soak up the sweet pink juice.
The strawberries are pretty good this year: we had a lot of rain and just enough sunshine lately to ripen and sweeten them. The past few days have actually been warm. Summer is upon us. I’ve waited a long time for these effortless days–now that they’re here, I encounter something I forget from year to year: Summer makes me sad.
Maybe I depend on the exertion of the woodpile, the snow shovel, the Advent and Lenten rehearsals, the drumbeat of the academic year, for equilibrium or distraction. All of a sudden I’m in a broad expanse of Ordinary Time and I feel depressed. Once again, I haven’t measured up. My life reads like a series of embarrassing failures. The bright enduring light of summer seems like too much to bear. The pair of finches who built a nest in my hanging fuchsia didn’t show up for a few days and my worst fears were realized. I carefully removed the four tiny dead fledglings and wrapped them in white tissue paper before I buried them. My eyes were full, but I didn’t cry until I heard this song on the car radio.
My grandmother lived to be 99. She and my grandfather farmed and raised 10 children through the Great Depression. She made quilts, had a lovely garden every year, and shyly covered her mouth when she laughed. I hope someday the story of my life can be told in three such interesting sentences.
We expect so much of ourselves when, actually, all we need to do is live the life than unrolls in front of us. Summer is daunting in its sweetness and intensity. But oh, the sadness of having only 100 summers.
Oh man, the poor wee finches. The hormones, they just will not tolerate this affront. I’mma gonna have to go sniff a baby.
You hit the nail on the head. The summer. We are supposed to be warmed by it. But the fragility (and sadness) of summer is pronounced when its rhythms of life and death are more evident in its light.