SUMMER 2016: A Season of Possibilities

"Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." ~  Daisy Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

By Frank Sayles Jr.

Summer is a time of possibilities. The days are longer; the skies are brighter; the world is warmer.

The hot South Georgia sun hugs us closely, its warm, whispery breath on our necks. A hazy veil falls upon the land and shrouds our lazy days of longing amid, what Joni Mitchell calls, "the hissing of summer lawns."

The other night, I spied the intermittent blinking of lightning bugs, the first ones that I have seen in the city in years. As children, we would catch them in old mayonnaise jars, punching holes in the metal lids to allow air. We would place the jars on our nightstand as we went to sleep, but always the "fireflies" would be dead come morning; they would never last the short night.

So too, summer would not last. Far too soon, we would return to school and have to put away the shiny things of summer. Before long, a crispness would return to the air as summer became but a pleasant memory fading away to another autumn.

Thus, the cycle continues. Summer officially arrived at 6:34 p.m.  Monday, making it the longest day of the year with about 15 hours of sunlight. For local school children, their summer began a month ago and will end in a short six weeks or so.

Don't miss the summer for it is here now; and its possibilities are indeed endless. We are in the primordial season of renewal.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Great Gatsby":  "And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."

We have the power to create the future, for it is summer and the days are long.