Summertime

Summertime when will you come?
I wanna put my light things on
Wanna put my winter life away
Summertime I need a sunny day

And I want to drive forever
Wanna roll my windows down
Get the breeze back on my body
Get my feet back on the ground.
Sharon Robinson

Summertime
And the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy’s rich
And your ma is good-lookin’
So hush, little baby
Don’t you cry…
Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward & George Gershwin

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colours in a parched landscape…
Harper Lee

It is that time of year again. The days stretching out towards midnight and first light before 5 am. The harsh cold of the northern winter melts slowly into the background, as the air retains its balmy quality even throughout the nights.

Childhood memories surface: walking barefoot on sand roads by the seaside, making hay with the farming families in the July heat, and swimming in the fresh waters of Irish rivers, a welcome escape from the sweltering heat. Romantic memories for sure! If we consult the weather records, we quickly understand the term `heatwave´ as used in Ireland to describe three days or more of decent warm, dry, sunny weather. Even more reason for my compatriots to relish such weather when it occurs.

On leaving home to go to college in Dublin, I noticed that it rained a lot less even on the east coast of our exposed island, than in Limerick, the city at the mouth of the River Shannon, where I grew up.

Frank McCourt, writing about our hometown in his somewhat caustic and always funny autobiography `Angela’s Ashes´ describes his miserable Irish childhood and goes on to write: `Above all – we were wet. Out in the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick…… The rain drove us into the church – our refuge, our strength, our only dry place…… Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.´ And so it was.

A sunny week or two in July or August, especially removed from Limerick to our holiday home in the Wild West of Co. Mayo, made up for the endless damp, the torrential rain, and the gales at home. Even if the summer days were cool and windy, we did not let that prevent us from having a swim in the sea, getting undressed and dressed again in the car, where we were sheltered from the harsh, cool westerly winds. I still occasionally see kids making the mad dash from car to water and back again on my regular visits to our beautiful island.

Then came the adolescent summer of 1976 with its sustained heat and drought from June through to September. That golden summer (to the soundtrack of 10cc – `I’m not in love´) left a lasting impression on the fifteen-year-old dreamer that I was. Perhaps it was during these sweltering months that I unconsciously decided that leaving Ireland was a price worth paying for such weather. Three years later, I headed to the continent, just for a summer. I have not returned to Ireland for any extended period since.

I’m blessed to live in a continental climate, having relocated first to southern Germany while still a student and later to the Rheinland, my current home. There were intermezzos in Mozambique where I coordinated an ecological project for the German Development Agency over two years, and in the former GDR near Berlin, where I lived and worked for almost five years. Good summers all round, whereas Mozambique won hands down in terms of heat. The price to be paid in the Tropics, however, is the inevitable sudden arrival of darkness between 6pm and 7pm, depending on the time of year. No extended evenings ever to be experienced there.

This morning, my inner clock woke me at 4.30, in good time to meditate and have tea before heading out through the fields in an easterly direction, to meet the rising sun. I am fortunate to live in such semi-rural surroundings with broad horizons in all directions. The best days are those where I get to greet both the beginning and the end of the day. Dawn and dusk are my favourite times, to be enjoyed in the company of the birds, many of whom migrate back here from Africa for the summer months. The first sighting (by ear) of the sky lark in March is a special milestone in the year. Their song fills the air here above the fertile fields from morning till night until late September. 

In the old days, their departure was always a source of sadness for me. That has changed. I now no longer try to hold on to any season, content to let them come and go in their natural cycle, as has been the case for eons. That notion, that this is an ancient dynamic, brings me even closer to all of creation and the Source. The more I have learned to let go, the more intensive and joyful is the experience of each successive season. It seems that life is increasing in vitality as it unfolds.

A good exercise in letting go is, on a hot day like today, to close my eyes and recall the memory of the coldest day of the previous winter. The hike with friends through the nearby hill in the fresh snow. In winter I do the same, imagining the early morning swim with the thermometer hitting over 20*C before sunrise. These mental exercises work wonders, keeping my enthusiasm for the ever-turning wheels of times vibrant and grateful.

I now consider myself a meteorological migrant. As a person who prefers to spend as much time as possible out of doors, engaged in running, cycling, hiking, gardening, dining, etc. I could not imagine bending to the constraints of the Irish climate, `mild and wet in winter, mild and wet in summer´. My sojourns in Ireland are enjoyed all the more for the fact that there is a welcome cooling off from my norm in summer or the enjoyment of mild short days around the turn of the year, and the knowledge that I will soon be returning to my preferred climate.

Next month I will return to Ireland for a gathering of my siblings to celebrate the 50^th birthday of the youngest of ten. This, in itself, is a miracle. Our gathering will be worthily framed by mid-summer nights which never get fully dark, and days spent on the river in communion with salmon and trout, and in the sand dunes where we played as children, the air filled with the sweet summer song of the sky larks.