Summer's End
May 16, 2011
She said it softly, her last words of the day, as she pulled up the comforter to settle in for the night, ``I gave thanks for the basil plants in our garden today.'' ``What?'' I said, putting down what I was reading. ``They were glistening in the spray as I watered them, their perfume filling the air. They were so beautiful. And I gave thanks that we have water, that we have it so simply, at the end of a hose. This will be the last batch of the summer.'' And then she drifted off to sleep. My wife is given to such endings of the day. Small, smooth thought pebbles that she almost absent-mindedly tosses off into the pool of my almost quiet thoughts. And the ripples begin... . I thought first of that little patch of basil in our garden that had evoked this welling up of gratitude. A dozen uncomplaining plants, which have contributed their zest and color to the simple meals of summer. Finished, now? Has summer gone again? Now I remembered a touch of crispness in the air this morning. Or was that my imagination? What about all those summer projects and adventures I had planned? The walks along the beach, the barbecue for the neighbors, refinishing the floors, the romantic picnic in the country. All gone? All lost? Summer's end means facing the end of vitality. In summer we are immersed in life's fruitfulness. The fall harvests are the product, the issue of the earth's labor and our labor; fall is, by comparison to summer, a calm and pensive time. Fall is hauling in the bounty, showing off the goods, putting up the stores. Our thankfulness is for what we have set before us. But summer's end is the time for feeling earth's exhaustion; it is the satisfaction and the weariness of the worker coming home. Nature's prodigious task of combining the elements and the forging, the fusing and the fashioning of the bounty has run its course. The earth is spent. For all its lazy-hazy veneer, there is an intensity, an earnestness, about summer. And its ending brings on thoughts of loss. Loss of vitality, of time, of life itself. The end of summer is a thief. It takes with it those things we aren't aware of having lost. Sometimes we only become aware of the larceny many summers later. We come upon the old dried-up baseball glove, the warping tennis racquet, the dusty bike, the deflated basketball. Those things we may have just tossed into the garage or basement with no particular thought, at the end of a summer's day of play. At first we cannot remember how long it's been. And then we begin to number the years. Can it have been so long? You should have seen me then! We cannot remember ever actually thinking, ``Well, that's enough of that.'' It was taken from us by the stealthy end of summer. Professionals in sports are onto this treacherous thievery. That's why, I suspect, they tend to approach the end of summer with a certain deliberation, even solemnity. Retire the jersey, hang the pennant, inscribe the record book. There may have been more final outs, last laps, match points and final putts than we are aware of as the fans are swarming out the gates. I'll take my applause now, thank you, just in case. To be sure, summer's end is also the return to school. We surround the start of the academic year with images of new beginnings. New clothes, new books; we encourage returning students to think in terms of new opportunities and new friends. And yet, even as we wave the eager and anxious youngsters on, we cannot help but think the wistful thought, ``Those heedless days, for me, are done.'' It is the memory of loss that summer's end provokes in us, even as we go about renewing. Summer's end can lead us to ponder how we deal with all the other endings in our lives. You'd think that what we have come to call the end of the year would serve this purpose. But somehow we have decided to festoon that time with frenzy and New Year's resolutions, tugging us forth, distracting us from facing up to what has been and is now gone. No.. We have left the task to summer. It is summer's end that leads us without escape to where we are most reluctant to go: to the realization that the days are shortening, and that some of what we have been given, we will never have again. Back in the quiet of the night I hear, or imagine, the rustling of leaves. Autumn, for sure. And I think that it would give such peace if, each time I discover and ponder an ending or loss, I could come to speak a word of simple gratitude, as I had heard at the end of this day. Mr. Hanley directs a community mediation program in San Mateo, Calif.
