Summer is over.
Yes, I know. The calendar and the weather forecast may not agree. It's still August and still seems just as hot as summers in the state tend to be (though September in Arkansas often seems like the warmest month of the year, mostly because we are so eager for that not to be the case).
The lakes and pools are likely still almost as full of folks as water, drive-through lines indicate ice cream is still a hot commodity and shorts outside are still the garment of choice, though working from home may have extended that for a lot of people.
But in many ways, for many of us, summer is over.
You remember summer, right? That time in our distant past when we got to relax. No school, no shoes, no problem. Our biggest concerns were sunburn and bugs. Vacation for the whole summer or for at least a week were the order of the day and all was well with the world
We lost the razors and the long-sleeve shirts, found the straw hats and flip flops. Anything was possible, including just doing nothing in a carefree environment.
Summer.
That's the summer we thought we would have, the Great First Summer after the Darkness of Covid, the summer where we all threw off our masks and stepped into both the bright light of the season and the rest of our lives. Out of the darkness of the Plague and into the sunshine of our new, vaccinated selves.
Oh, the celebrations! Oh, the fellowship! Oh, the travel!
Oh ... well.
Summer is over.
Realistically, given the current environment, perhaps we were expecting too much. That's not that unique for summer. We enter with high hopes and leave with peeling skin; we promise ourselves a beach bod and wind up ... about the same.
But we leave with the memories and the moments that more than overwhelm temporary disappointment. Still couldn't get up on water skis. Still got to spend most of the summer at the lake.
This year, that disappointment may have taken on a larger role in our lives. And no amount of aloe is going to make it burn less. Things didn't turn out like we hoped. This isn't the summer we expected. And we did it to ourselves.
Should have seen it coming. When most of us can't agree on basic information from sources we've always trusted, the idea that we'd all agree on something new and different, developed using technology with which we aren't familiar, may have been wishful thinking
The vaccine is different. Different is scary and reluctance is to be expected. And, if reluctance isn't the answer, perhaps what accounts for our low vaccination rates is a slightly more infuriating tendency among some to stake a claim for extremely subjective political positions on opposition to anything, anything at all, being proposed by the "other side."
And so, at a time when we should be wringing the last bit of fun out of our summer before heading back to a more familiar school year and fall, we find ourselves beating the same dead horses and checking the drawers for those masks again.
Covid, it appears, doesn't care about our summer, laughs in the face of our plans and has not one little concern for what we think about it or who we voted for or whatever odd, unrelated cure we read about on social media while claiming we won't take the vaccine because it's not completely approved. So, covid doesn't appreciate irony.
It just makes us sick. More of us, more sick. And now, the one positive trait that it had, leaving the youngest among us blissfully unimpacted, appears to have been swallowed whole by the Delta variant. It's truly a sickness for all of us now.
And the bright shiny summer we thought we were going to have, the one of festivities and parties and gatherings and public events, all unmasked and unencumbered and leading into a fall of more of the same? Well, that's not happening now. Now our lasting memories will be spiking case counts and overflowing hospitals and more infighting and recrimination and anger and finger-pointing. And, again, we did it to ourselves.
It's a little chillier at night now. The days seem slightly shorter. The clock keeps ticking, calendar pages keep turning. Time moves on, even if some of us appear to be stuck in place.
Summer's over. And a cold, dark winter may be heading our way.