Summer solstice is on its way. The weather that I love the best, somewhat misnamed June Gloom, has gone sideways into a maddog heatwave. Even my geraniums look wilted in temps that are hovering around triple-digits. I feel cheated.
What I plan to enjoy most about summer in my home is easily described: barefoot and candlelit. For the past few summers I have tried to make this a house rule, but there was too much upheaval and sorrow, as well as exhaustion while running the business and all the rest, to try to uphold a rule that is supposed to be about ambiance and romance. But this year might be different. A lot has happened over the past year. I have sold the business; mostly finished the enormous task of administrating my mother's trust; finished a master bathroom remodel after a leaking water heater caused water and mold damage over a year ago. My rental tenants have moved out and I am in the process of putting that house on the market, and lastly, I am parting from my therapist who has greatly helped me through my three-year sojourn through hell and back. I am only now catching up on long-overdue medical appointments and beginning to write more than in my burgeoning journals.
The new master bathroom with its enlarged shower, as well as other modest changes in my house, are helping to make it feel like my home and to create some distance from the turmoil and unhappiness that were contained within its walls for so long. Alas, there is no magic that can deliver me from random thoughts of what-might-have-been, or from the daily sense of loss of someone who was part of my life, for better or for worse, for three decades.
Still, summer brings some rewards. Karen and Greg will be here for several days over Fourth of July, and I am so looking forward to time with them. I love spending time with my friends and fristers here. Along with Joel, they are my family; the most important part of my life. My friends always have been. When I was a teenager, my mother told me that my friends wouldn't be here for me throughout my life; only my family would be. Boy, was she wrong, and even then, I knew that wasn't true. I loved my parents, and greatly enjoyed the adult time I shared with them for the first two decades of my marriage. We traveled with them; shared a season box at the Hollywood Bowl, and went back and forth to each other's homes for dinners on a weekly basis. But my network of friends were and are the kaleidoscope of personalities and humor and tastes and interests that provide vitality to my life. Over the years, I've winnowed out the pain-in-the-ass ones; accepted most of the traits that don't jive with mine, and I relish the enrichment of their presence in my life. And even with the next generation, as I enjoy sharing time and conversations with Connie and Curt's, and Brendan and Diana's kids, and with Greg and Karen's Hayley; all now adults who don't dismiss Joel and I as just their parents' friends.
So, summer. The house is filled with large and small Pottery Barn candles on timers. It continuously costs me a fortune in batteries, but when the sun goes down, the house glows. Ana keeps the floors clean, so barefoot feels good. When this blasted heatwave ends, hopefully before the solstice, I will throw open all of the french doors which line the inside of the u-shape of my house leading out to the pool in the center. I know that the solstice means all kinds of (silly) things to the new-agers. But this year, I hope it will mean something much more lofty and important to me. It will mean barefoot and candlelit. Ready or not, here comes summer...
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