Breakneck speed

The summer is waning, and I am already in mourning for it, although it lingers in my neighborhood.

I know that my friends in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire lament a real summer; the Atlantic states of the U.S. have suffered an unusually wet and cold summer this year. I feel badly for them. Even though part of me wishes East Tennessee had suffered the same fate. My attitude is necessarily colored by the fact that our air conditioner didn't play nicely this year and we have spent a number of days/weeks wilting in the heat and humidity of a fairly normal East Tennessee summer.

Now the AC works. The hummingbirds are firmly entrenched in my yard and sipping from my sugar water feeder. The tomato plants are heavy with fruits that will probably not ripen before fall arrives. And yet I'm already missing the hot weather.

This summer of 2009 presented so many unusual and interesting pursuits with which to pass our time.

I have never printed up nor delivered so many résumés and cover letters to be ignored as I have this year. I have never submitted so many electronic versions of those things, either.

I have never spent so much time throwing a tennis ball for a corgi. No, seriously. Although Doris is my fifth Welsh corgi, I have never been so involved with a dog's health, happiness and well-being as I have been with Doris' this year.

I have never walked as much in my immediate neighborhood as I have this hot summer. Thank you, again, to Doris Daylily for getting me out of my comfort zone in more than a couple of ways.

In twenty-two years of marriage, I have never spent so very much time with my husband as I have in the last 11 weeks. (Eleven weeks or so. I'm not entirely sure I've done the math correctly.) We've had lovely vacations in '96, '98, and every year since then, which included two weeks together and sometimes even three weeks spent in close proximity to each other, but never, ever have we been afforded 11 entire weeks just really, really closely to the other person.

I feel... really lucky that he hasn't decided to divorce me as a direct result of all this togetherness. I really thought that by now he would have figured out I'm a narcissistic bitch, but I seem to have fooled him anyway. (Or he's decided to ignore my shortcomings for the time being. Either way, I'm grateful.)

I have never seen so many bats flying out of my next-door-neighbor's chimney as I have this year. I love every one of them, since they eat the insects that I disdain. I need to remember to tell the new owner to please not have all the bats exterminated. I really do think they do our neighborhood a service.

I have never seen an owl flying at night as I did a couple of weeks ago. It was completely silent, and if it hadn't had a white underbelly, I might never have seen it when I took Doris out for a late-night jaunt.

I have never worried so much about frogs as I do this year. And honestly, I worried about them before. I should tell a story about our 2004 vacation at Edisto Island, when I watched a badly behaved little boy stomping ... No, I can't say it. I can't. It's too awful.

I have never been so nostalgic about camp. No, that's not true. I get this nostalgic about Camp Cherokee for Girls every summer. Every single glorious summer, I think about my time on the shores of lovely Lake Burton with the Cherokee princesses of days gone by. This year, I happen to have found a few other Cherokee princesses on Facebook, and that makes me awfully nostalgic. I heard from a woman who was my counselor when I was 9 and 10. Just thinking about camp in those halcyon days before personal computers and cell phones... I could weep with longing. I wish I could go back. I wish I could braid my hair and go back. Other than Mama and the comfort of her arms, no other place on earth offered as much hominess and love as Camp Cherokee for Girls. It never changed. Yes, it did, really, but the basics of it never changed.

I would give anything to stop this breakneck race toward autumn and go back to camp. As a child or a counselor. Doesn't matter. That's how much I loved it. Every once in a while Wesley and I discuss my total lack of interest in entrepeneurial pursuits, and it's true: I really don't want to own my own business. Ever. But ... if I were going to own a business? It would have to be a girls' summer camp. Because everyone should have Woodland Fairies to sing them to sleep during summer nights. And if I could open a business that would do that? I would.

Seriously.

Glory to thee, my God, this night, for all the blessings of the light. Keep me, oh, keep me, King of Kings, beneath Thine own Almighty Wings.

And furthermore, Cherokee's gonna shine tonight. Cherokee's gonna shine.