Susan Senator

She’s a summer love in the spring, fall and winter.
–GFD

I know that it is freakishly warm for autumn, but I think that is one of the things that is making me so happy. I usually kind of hate the fall, even though it has my birthday packed into it, because fall feels like an ending, like brown, dried-out death. Even the air is more brittle. The light is too bright and does not foster growth. I know it is pretty, but it is pretty like a supermodel; all the parts are right and perfect, colorful, sunny, and yet somehow, it is only that and kind of vapid and empty inside. Spring and summer are, to me, real, lush, full-bodied, perhaps uncomfortable, sweaty, chilly: the stuff that creates life.

So I’m being lulled into a happy summer state by the Indian Summer. It was 86 degrees yesterday (Boston!) and I could go for a run at the Rez in my old navy blue paint-spattered disintegrating Penn shorts (from 1984, rescued from Mom’s house) and fluorescent pink tank top. (Pink always helps you succeed, at whatever it is you’re doing.) No wind to hurt my ears. Ducks a-splashin’ and Canadian geese a-shittin’ everywhere like it was early June. The lake smell of the water. The happy oldsters walking and talking. The moms and nannies pushing fancy strollers, fat babies straining to get out. College girls going impossibly fast, no fat on their bouncy bodies.

Crazy weather, but so much fun. My iPod finally died, after all this time, at the halfway point, yet I could keep going because those same old Arabic and John Denver and Bob Dylan songs are just so in my head, that it was as if it was playing for real! I feel like I know the Arabic words by now, but of course I’m just singing it all phonetically. I have to ask my Lebanese friend what are the following words: damon, ay-wah, leysh, el, and one that sounds like Miss Honeydew?

Well, I’ve just had coffee cup number two (never as good as # one, that’s why it is #two) out on the porch, again, like it was July. So sweet. Made Natty a bagel and greeted N.S, who is shopping for a new stereo (our oldie finally broke; it is so old it came with a record player). He is also buying me a dark purple, fuschia, and lavender velvet costume with holographic beads and gold fringe for my birthday. Deep Purple: Wa-Wa-Waaa; Wa-Wa-Wa-ah; Wa-Wa-Waaa; Wa-ah. I will provide no link because you should be able to guess what that crazy thing is.

Boys two and three are still asleep, and probably look SO cute, but I’ll leave them alone. I will kiss Ned instead, who just got out of bed, a sleepy look about his head.

Ah, Saturday in the “summertime.” Feels like my whole life is stretching out lazily, like a beautiful, entitled cat.