The Promise of Summer

It’s getting closer, you can feel it in the air.  It’s stirring in the undercurrents of the wind. It’s coming, with the warming of the weather.  It is Spring and Summer.  Today, for the first time in many months I drove home with the windows down, radio up and shoes off. It was magnificent.

It has been a long, cold, hard winter, and I am ready for the good stuff.  There is a trip to the beach this weekend, and many more weekend trips to come. There is an actual vacation scheduled, the first in several years. And a new place to live promises great evenings on the porch, ready for wine and conversations.

My father’s cancer has slowed and will soon be in remission, my career has steadied, and family responsibilities are low.  After the past few years, I am ready to come out of the cocoon, transformed, gilded by the fire of difficult times, baked in the harsh light of heartache, set to cool in a body of tears. It is time to experience the promise of summer.

It is the promise of lighter times, smiles and laughter, warm days, cool nights, backyard Bar B Qs and late nights in. It is friendship and hugs, live music, street festivals, patio margaritas, and birthdays and weddings, and celebrations of life. I want to feel the wind blowing in my hair, as I drive with the windows down, friends with me ready for adventures and road trips to fun places. Chili cheese dogs at a Braves game, movies in the park, dancing in the rain. It is, in essence, the promise of hope. And just as the new leaves peek out from the safety of their branches, so must I leave the safety of my comfort zone.

And this year, this summer, I am looking for it. Love.  Not just a summer fling that turns cold with the first winds of Autumn, I mean the real thing.   Little boys dressed in mens clothing who are afraid of relationships need not apply. I want slow dancing in the kitchen, late night conversations, hand holding in the park, long hikes in the woods, conversations you never want to end, slow, rich, passionate kisses that make you dizzy. To find comfort and solace in another human being and be vulnerable right down to the core.  To build something larger and deeper than myself.

I feel like, for the first time in a log time, I am free to follow dreams, hopes and dsires that make life worth living. I want to set this summer on fire with life.

And I pray to bring the right kind of people into my life – those who match my level of integrity, faith, loyalty and honor.  Much heartache and drama can be avoided by not assuming that just because you get along and have compatible personalities that they are meant to be in your life and close to you.  It takes time, and seeing the clues as to who people really are, or at least not being blind to them.

And so as the weather gets warmer, my hopes are high. For everything good this summer, for love and laughter of friends and family. New experiences, old hang outs, and lasting memories to be made. The moments of building a life, living and loving well all the while. Yes, all of this is held in the promise of summer.