Feels Like Summer
On the first of May every year I’m taken back to a memory from my childhood: Me, sitting at my kitchen table with the sun beaming in through the double doors, my Dad opening them wide and announcing the official beginning of summer.
According to the laws of astronomy, the beginning and end of seasons are determined by dates of equinoxes and solstices. There’s a spring equinox, a summer solstice, an autumn equinox, and a winter solstice, the end of one always marking the beginning of the next. Because these dates change every year, so to do the lengths of astronomical seasons. This years summer solstice falls on June 20th, so therein marks the beginning of the astronomical summer. While meteorology also takes notice of equinoxes and solstices when determining the length of a season, by this law the seasons fall not on the day of those equinoxes and solstices, but on the first day of the month during which they happen. So this year, by meteorological standards, summer begins on June 1st.
In primary school summer began at the end of June, marked by a trip to McDonalds for a Happy Meal followed by long hours spent playing on the green with an extended curfew. Later, in secondary school, summer began even earlier at the end of May. How we marked the start of the secondary school summer changed throughout the years as we discovered vices like knacker drinking and lying to our parents about our whereabouts. These early years were often spent carefree and jobless, and this allowed us to be fully present in them. Now, as adults, summer passes us by in the blink of an eye. But back then, whether we had two or three months off, we felt as though we had all the time in the world.
All of these conflicting dates only mean one thing: that there is no universally accepted first day or length of summer. Which makes sense, because summer is not so much marked by the laws of any particular science, but rather by a feeling.
It’s summer when the lawnmower comes out and there’s a lingering smell of fresh cut grass.
It’s summer when the clocks go forward and there’s a grand aul stretch in the evenings.
It’s summer when someone sticks a block of HB vanilla ice-cream between two wafers.
It’s summer when you’re ma gives you fifty euro to get a few blonde highlights in your hair.
It’s summer when there’s nothing better than the smell of suncream on your skin.
It’s summer when red wine in cozy little snugs is replaced by ice-cold cider in beer gardens.
It’s summer when festival line-ups are announced and live music is taken outdoors.
It’s summer when you think you’re invincible under the Irish sun only to end up with sun stroke.
It’s summer when crowds gather for sunrise swims at Dublin’s Forty Foot.
It’s summer when pasty skin becomes dotted with golden freckles.
It’s summer when you pack a suitcase full of bikinis and sandals from Penneys and fly to exotic places.
It’s summer when that first whiff of a BBQ is sent around the estate, signaling the neighbours to fire up their own.
Whether it’s early May or late June, we feel summer. We smell it, taste it, hear it. It takes a hold of us and activates our senses in a way that no other season is capable of. Perhaps this is because summer, with all it’s bells and whistles, offers us something that is harder found in colder months, something we crave now more than ever: hope.
