Endless Summer

We've been in CA for a little over a week now. It's like suspended summer here. Ever day is sunny. Being from Maine, this is still hard for me to believe! In Maine we study the forecast, holding onto sunny day predictions like guiding lights that sustain us through the fog. Those sunny days in Maine are the prefect gems that remind you why you live there, and if you miss them..buddy you are in for some sad times. You have to pay attention and hurry, get in that picnic, that day at the beach, that camping trip in the mountains quick, this weekend, let nothing interfere because it might be our last chance! And you must remain vigilant and not give up hope. If it is rainy for the entire months of June and July you can't give up on summer...you just need to rearrange everything and cram it into those two golden weeks in August. Otherwise you miss it until next year!

If I were home in Maine right now I would be scurrying like everyone else to pack as much as possible into the last precious days of summer. Every swim could be the last. I would be hauling the biggest, heaviest, most precious items out of the garden: the tomatoes, the eggplants, the peppers, the melons, the squash. If I were back on my old homestead I would be caning over a hot stove late into the night, stacking up those jars on the shelves. I would be feeling the pressure to get the wood chopped and stacked on the back porch before snow. I would be studying the forecast and keeping the frost cloth ready, and closing the hoophouse doors at night. This has always been such an exultant but bittersweet time of year for me. I am usually tan and muscled and dirty and tired much of the time from the summer's labors. It's my favorite time of year, but it marks the end. The harvest has come in, the work is done, there is bounty everywhere and the days of warmth are numbered and silvered around the edges with frost. They soon slide into a slow decline of warmth and light....into the darkness. The activity is over, the rest of the year is a time to rest and wait. It seems a long time until it will come again.

Here...there is no such pressure. Each and every day is a shining array of sunshine, ocean breezes and 80 degree weather. It is ALWAYS cool and refreshing in the morning and in the evening, ALWAYS hot in the afternoon. Variations include perhaps a slight bit of fog in the early morning or a slightly stronger and usual breeze in the afternoon. Ther are ALWAYS fruit and flowers here. To my New England sensitivities this seems wrong and suspicious somehow. Truly, how do people ground themselves and orient their lives without commanding and punishing weather patterns? I guess I will have to find out. As it stands for me right now though, I feel suspended in summer, with time on my hands stretching out ahead of me. I can hardly remember the last time that I felt that way. Probably my early twenties? My suspicions about the unnaturalness of the climate really hold very little clout in my mind at the moment. Perhaps it's the sun already causing a haze in my thinking? Soon I may have a perma-tan and spend my days rollerblading Venice beach in my bikini with my toy poodle. Anyway it is just too nice to not just enjoy it. It's a quick bike ride down the hill to the beach from our little rented house, and over the last week I have experienced a few incredibly precious moments of complete lightness, complete opening, while watching the sun on the waves. It was like I stepped outside of my life and even my mind for a moment and floated above it all on the breeze. Complete joy. For no other reason than just...'cuz.

Another much more mundane element helping to create my suspended life at the moment is a temporary cash shortage. The move and the family transitions of the last few months have been very expensive and we are in a period of just trying to catch up from that. I am not crying poor because we live very fortunate lives and I am sure that we will be fine very soon, and the only reason that I mention it is because, although some moments of worry and annoyance have come of it, some really good and important things come clear when you are .....well, broke, even if it is just temporary. We don't drive around running errands all of the time. I hate errands. We don't go out much. I love to cook! Many meals from the last week have included the delicious and free mint, rosemary and lavender that happen to grow in our front yard. ( I would use these anyway, but I am extra appreciative of them this week.) We don't have a TV yet so we read at night. This reminds me of a time in my life when I lived a life relatively disconnected from mainstream society and I had pretty much forgotten how nice it can be. I can hear the crickets. We look for fun nearby, like the beach! I have been to the beach more times in the last week than in all of last summer in Maine. And I lived near the beach! In the larger picture, I have thought this week that we, probably like most people, more often look up the socio-economic ladder than down, and that is not a good thing. I have also thought that the things for happiness and survival are simpler than we realize most of the time. This sounds really cliche, sorry, but it is true. I hope I remember it next week.

Someone asked me today what I think of living here, and it is still much too early to say much for sure. As I said, I feel suspended, and parts of me are slowly arriving, as I suspect they will for a long time. I am outside the heavy turn of the season in my native home for the first time in a long time, and I am outside of the rituals and routines of any community at the moment. My life is feeling pretty wide open, and I'm not finding it hard to appreciate that.