A Lament for Eternal Summer

   Traditionally Summer is the season of fulfillment, maturity, the height of the earth’s glory. But I have not found it so. 

   Summer is traditionally the season of romance. It was certainly designed to be so. The balmy evenings, the crickets’ serenade, the gleanings of the fireflies within the shadows of the trees. It’s the backdrop for romance. Just never for me. 

   They say Spring is new birth, Summer is fullness, Autumn is the melancholy of letting go, and Winter is Death…but I have not found it to be so. 

   The Year is backward, inside-out, and reversed for me. 

   Spring is the heartbreak of the year. Even as it promises new beginnings it usually takes something precious from me.

   Every spring, while the earth gives birth and rejoices, I am barren and alone. Each animal finds its mate, and the lads run after the lasses. But every year without fail, I am left out of the revels. 

   Each summer reigns in its pomp, scattering its promises of eternity and fulfillment, throwing open the gates to invite every eligible maiden to the ball, but no one asks me to dance. 

   Spring brings pain. Summers are lonely. 

   Autumn has always seemed to be a joyous deliverance. Its particular flavor of magic, its childlike mystery and wonder all seemed to be whispering to me that anything could happen. Change was in the wind, strange stirrings afoot. 

   Autumn is not melancholy. Autumn is joy and abundance. 

   It seems to me that I’ve been stuck in Summer for a long, long time. Weeding and tending my garden; keeping the soil loose and watered. I watch the fruit ripening on the vines, flushed with color. I guard them, I nurture them as they grow. But somehow, the fruit never comes off the vine. I never get to enjoy the fruit of my labors. 

   My heart is not barren. There is a harvest to be gathered in. I have aging wine laid away in reserves. 

   Every Autumn I prepare a feast. I set the table, I load it with all sorts of delicacies, and I set lighted candles at the windows. And every year only a stray guest or two trickles in, takes a few bites, and wanders off again. 

   When the Autumn comes, I yearn to be a part of it. It never seems to come inside of me, somehow. 

   I see now that I have always equated romantic love with fulfillment. Why wouldn’t I? Life is about family, is it not? And as an adult, it is only natural to want to start your own. 

   Even with all that is wrong in our culture, holidays are still built around the family. And the other holidays our culture has “made a thing,” are centered around romantic love. As the Wheel turns, each season and almost every month is propelled forward by the comings and goings of the Family.  What are you to do, then, when you are no longer a child in your family, and unable to start your own? 

   To be a single person is to be continually on the outside looking in. Everyone seems so happy, and you desperately want to be happy…so you try or pretend, or both at once. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking work. You give and give of yourself to keep the fruit from rotting on the vine, and yet you are never allowed to enjoy it yourself. 

   Every year I want to move forward, but I can’t. Love is never mutual. As much as I yearn to love and be loved, no one can awaken love in me. Or if it is offered, I cannot return it. Which is a riddle that baffles my mind as it maddens my senses and enrages my sore heart. 

   “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” (Proverbs 13:12) 

   I am doomed every year, even every month, to watch people around me passing milestones; having their desires fulfilled. I’m always left behind, sweltering in my labors, imprisoned in this eternal state of summer. 

   Summer is not supposed to last forever. 

“Once you drop an anchor, a boat gets stuck.

And it would stay forever

Just floating on top. 

Watching life pass it by

Just floating on top.

Show me how to climb back on that wheel

I’ll be there, slick as a slingshot

Prepared to get off at the end

And share with someone my spot. 

You can’t have living without dying, 

So you can’t call this living what we’ve got. 

We just are

We just be 

No before 

No beyond

A rowboat anchored in the middle of a pond.” 

(“The Wheel,” from “Tuck Everlasting.”) 

~Cadenza