It’s June!
Who remembers the opening to “Dandelion Wine”, Douglas lying
in bed on the first day of summer? Wake up , world! He exhaled and the
streetlights went out, blinked, and the old people across the way stepped onto
their porch for the morning paper. Opened his fists and dawn spiraled across
the sky, spilling gold and pink and lavender over the mist-shrouded town.
Mourning doves rustled their feathers and sighed like complacent church women,
a new breeze tickled the willow branches, and the windows slapped open on the
house next door. And . . .
Summer. Began.
And Douglas knew, even though he was only twelve, that he
was completely and utterly alive that day. And he recognized the
responsibilities of being alive – the main one being, of course, to be aware of said life. In a way that, quite
possibly, only a child could master, he goes through the summer with a sort of
hyper- awareness, noticing . . . well, the snap of a silken web across his
cheeks, the heady stink of a dandelion beneath his nose, the power of feet and
legs, sinew and bones that enables him to run forever.
Dear God, I want to be twelve again.
But summer is upon us, and here is what I know about that:
if, in the evening, when the light is a lemony slant through the green tangle
of the lilac bushes, I take a tall glass of rum-and-coke to the porch swing and
wait there, the Winter Girl steps back. She who huddled in the cold shadow of
her losses begins to stretch in the sun’s dying rays. Tears already drying, she
sniffs the wind like a small forest creature and registers the sweetness of
grass and new tomato plants. Her skin goosebumps beneath the tread of a tiny
ladybug and her eyes follow the circle of bats at the streetlight. And summer
explodes in her mind with the fizz and pop of a thousand Thunder Snaps.
Summer. Is here.
Douglas took the summer of 1928 and bottled it. Dandelion
Wine lined up in gleaming bottles on the basement shelf, each with its own
label and its own memory. This bottle: the smell of peonies, this one: the cold
rush of creek water over toes. So when the inevitable winter returned, he had
only to traverse stairs - spiders and damp mold stink – to find, again, his
joy.
Were people smarter back then, or is a child, simply by the
nature of the best, always more intelligent than the rest of us?
The girl on the porch swing sips through a straw, closes
contented eyes and toes her shoes off onto the porch boards.
