the happy conservative

I love summer. I love the smell of the grass. I love the color of the grass. I love the freedom of waking every day to a day’s work; rather than to a month’s study play.

More than that, I love the plains in summer. I love thunderheads over the prairie, where blues and purples accent the eerie still as the wind changes from a shifty southern breeze to a steady, cool, northern gust. I love the crack of the lightning across the AM radio with the Cardinals and Mike Shannon. I love to listen to the pitter patter of the rain on the roof as I sit on the porch and feel the cool breeze across my open toes.

I love the smells. There’s a smell of freshly cut grass, a smell of thunder, a smell of mint and sunset at dusk when the cicadas chirp and the lightning bugs shine. There’s the acrid smell of fireworks on the fourth and a peculiar and unique smell of pansies in April.

There’s Bud and baseball and brats and burgers and bugs. There’s golf on green fairways and books that get read and long runs and long days and short summer love.

There’s flying and airports and Cessnas and fresh salad. There are thunderstorms and hot, muggy days and that fourth day in July when the rain finally comes and the heat breaks and family gathers for homemade ice cream and fireworks. There’s patriotism. There’s love. There’s hope and forgiveness and unforgiving gusts that sweep from the north and cool the baked earth before six weeks of sun.

There’s corn and beans and anxiety and preparation.

And then there’s the fall, a fall from the freedom and hope of the summer. I love summer. All of my grand dreams and defeats and fond memories and love happened in the summer. I proposed and hoped and rejoiced in the summer. I’ve been lonely and together in the summer. And always the prairie and the thunderheads and the cracking of lightning through Mike Shannon and Albert’s long fly ball - get up, get up, it’s gone!