BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It is a sultry day, smack in the middle of July, so I am temporarily confused by the department store flier. "Back-to-You-Know-What Sale," it says.
They couldn't mean school. That's at least half a season away. Goofballs, I think. Goofballs with an empty store.
I turn on the radio. Some guy is urging me to make plans now for the biggest fireworks ever. Hurry.
What fireworks, I wonder. Fourth of July is past. Couldn't be Riverfest. That's not until Labor Day, weeks away.
I open my door to heart-of-July humidity, stroll past my midsummer blooming honeysuckle and reach into my mailbox.
A little something from L.L. Bean. Their fall catalog. "With the arrival of fall and the colors of the season, our enthusiasm for the outdoors repeats itself," it says.
Has the retail world gone nuts? It's 90 degrees out, the ripest part of summer, that season we've longed for all year. And somebody's trying to convince us we need fleece-lined pullovers with handwarmer pockets.
Enough.
Holidays out of season
This is all because of the bad mistake we made with Christmas. We let merchants rush us into thinking we should prowl the malls in mid-October, pushing the calendar ahead by a good two months all year.
I know what they think - that if we buy early, we'll buy more.
So each holiday is taken out of season. The anticipation we and our children used to feel entering a special week has been replaced by the boredom of saturation. Let's get this Christmas thing over. Halloween candy goes stale before it hits a beggar's sack. Like the endless pre-game programming before a Super Bowl, the hype numbs us for the big show.
Snooze, dream, relax
But there is something especially damaging about what's happened to summer. We expect winter holidays to go by in a rush, but summer is supposed to linger. It's the one time of year we allow ourselves to relax, to do what simply feels good. It's snooze time, dream time. Those are times we need desperately, we late-20th century Americans who have turned "rush" from a good verb into a bad way of life.
If we don't draw the line on summer, we will never step aside from this inhuman race. And we'll never be satisfied with anything, hurrying through the present to get to whatever comes next.
Look outside. There are long, slow dusks out there. About now, mother robins are teaching their babies to fly. Monarchs have just hit town.
We don't need fleece-lined pullovers. We need peach ice cream cones at 9 at night and early-morning strolls in our garden. We need to throw back our heads and look at the clouds, or go to a park and throw a softball. We need long evening walks, quiet talks and sweet peas in vases by our bedside so we can inhale their fragrance all night. Smell summer. Taste summer. Most of us have forgotten how sweet it is.
Let's give ourselves permission.
For moral support, I've asked some summertime experts to help us along. So get this, Mr. L.L. Bean.
Of summer, Ben Pipkin, co-owner of Pipkin's Fruit and Vegetable Market in Montgomery, says, "We've hardly even started." Homegrown sweet corn has barely begun. Homegrown tomatoes and Indiana melons, those harbingers of full summer, are still two weeks away.
In local gardens, annual flowers are just coming into their peak, and midsummer favorites like roses and day lilies are "blooming their heads off," testifies Julia Murphy, Civic Garden Center horticulturist. "I don't know any gardener who's thinking of throwing the towel in yet."
Randy Morgan, assistant curator of the Cincinnati Zoo's insect world, says we're just reaching prime time for lightning bugs, "that classic sign of summer." The light show will be good for six weeks.
Meteorologically, it's another 10 days before we hit the height of summer, according to WLWT (Channel 5) meteorologist David Fraser. We've got three more months before we should be thinking of fleece-lined anything, and darkness still doesn't set in until after 9 each night.
So seize the day, the light, the season. Don't let summer - or life - get away.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE