The Season of Summer

Dewey & Robin

This is a picture of my sister Trishie’s cat, Dewey, taking his early summer morning stretch & yawn on the front porch. If you look closely over to the right, near the top of the wisteria bush, you can see a robin sitting on its nest, warming its eggs, and paying no apparent attention to Dewey.

I love what’s going on here. There is a cat and there is a bird, and isn’t one supposed to be afraid of the other? Isn’t one supposed to be focused on having the other for breakfast? It makes me examine my foregone conclusions about cats and birds and all sorts of things.

I watched this scene for a while, and it stayed the way it is in the picture, there was no flapping about or stealthy stalking. My sister says the robins have returned for a few years now to the wisteria and each year build a new nest. But next summer, the picture and its contents will be completely altered.

Dewey passed away in July.

Now it is mid-August. Last night, after the rain, the air turned sharply cool and the crickets began to jingle. Even if I didn’t have a calendar, I would know that summer is fast fading. The once bridal-white hydrangeas are now a pale, wistful green and the once orange day lilies are skinny stalks with no head and the crabgrass is growing like mad. Morning comes later and evening earlier.

We have these seasons of summer now and then to color our lives, our days…brief honeymoons of golden warmth and achingly sweet bliss. Falling in love is summer. So is a vacation in the mountains. So is potato salad and arugula and melons. The season of summer can make itself known in the picnic on the stoney shores of a dark green lake or breakfast in a sunny little courtyard or a dinner of fried clams on the rough deck of a beach cottage. It can make itself known in the scent of wild roses or the fragrance of sweet corn. It can make itself known in a whirly sundress or a blue bike or scratchy sand on the kitchen floor.

It made itself known to me when I took this picture of Dewey and the robin enjoying the morning with nothing to do but sit and dream and let the season of summer be.