I look back at my copy of Midnight In Paris as it sits on my television stand. It’s a film I watch at the start of every summer because its beauty encapsulates the spirit of the season and its story perfectly sums up the magic of summer’s endless possibilities when you’re still at the onset of it. I like the head space it puts me in. I can watch it on an evening when golden hour cascades my living room with soft orange light that turns purple and pink as the clock ticks away. It’s a harmonious experience that puts me in tune with summer much like reading a page or two from Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Now, I’m at my desk, prepping notes for the first Titans preseason game, and it feels like it was forever ago that I watched it. It serves as a reminder of how fast time passes the older I get. It felt like only yesterday that I was looking forward to our summer plans. Now, I’m wondering where the time has gone.
It’s fitting to be sitting down at my laptop to write this on August 1st. Of course, that’s because it’s the official unofficial start to a season I’ve completely made up in my head: late summer. I decided a while ago that it needed its own label. It’s far too hot (at least here in Middle Tennessee) to be considered Fall. But, it’s not quite summer either. It’s a trend I’ve picked up on the older I’ve gotten. For me personally, it feels like the summer’s over after the 4th of July. June is always such a busy month for us that we rarely plan anything deep into July. Usually, we need a reprieve of sorts. I started noticing on social media that a lot of my friends and family plan their vacations for June, too. It’s almost as if the promise of a new summer is so great that we collectively can’t wait to hit the road. Early summer is a time of great anticipation. Once it’s over, what’s left? The heat.
The heat isn’t so bad early on in the season. Or, perhaps it’s just that we’ve grown tired of the cold winter months and the Jekyll & Hyde spring season that typically throws temperatures back and forth between hot and cold enough that it makes everyone sick. Maybe we’re a little lenient on the heat. Here, May and early June aren’t so bad. It warms up early, but at least then, there’s still some semblance of a night breeze that cools things down. By July? Not so much – that’s when the humidity begins to set in. Just last week, I stepped outside at 10PM and it was still as if I was breathing in steam. I say all of this to highlight why, in my opinion, things seem to slow down at this time of year – it’s a bit of both calendars slowing down and unyielding heat and humidity setting in.
Things are quiet right now. I can head to just about any restaurant around and I won’t have to wait for a table. School isn’t quite back in session yet, so the traffic is lighter. I don’t know how scientific the methodology is, but that’s what I use as evidence to support my claim that this is a black hole on the calendar. It’s a season of its own….late summer.
And, I quite enjoy it. Dare I say, it may be my favorite time on the calendar…certainly the most underrated. I tend to run hot. I work a lot and I have for the better part of the last 13 years. For me, I need a quiet spell roughly every six months or so when nothing is going on and I can hear myself think. I usually take some time off during the holidays that satisfies this need. But, it’s hard to find during the summer time. Thankfully, late summer provides that bit of peace for me. I like to take a weekend to myself in early August to review my accomplishments for the year and to review my list of things left to do before the year’s up. I take a weekend to just relax, to purposefully clear my head, and reset for football season (I am a football writer, after all).
But, there’s more to late summer than it serving as a convenient checkpoint on my calendar. I also love the way nature behaves this time of year. There’s something about a sweaty hue over the moon at night that just looks mesmerizing…like something from a fantasy tale. The haze in the sky during the day makes it so that we don’t forget where we are on the calendar either. Leaves begin to turn a more shallow shade of green, sometimes, even yellow or downright brown. When I was a kid, I used to get my hopes up, thinking it was the arrival of an early fall. Now, I realize that it’s just the vegetation dying in the dryer weather and heat. It amounts to an encouraging message – “it can’t get much worse than this.” There’s nowhere to go but up! It also doesn’t hurt that I don’t have to mow my lawn as much this time of year either. Everything is beginning to die, and it may sound paradoxical, but that’s a pretty hopeful thing. It’s going to cool off before we know it.
It’s similar to why I love Thanksgiving. No, it’s not traditionally the most revered holiday, but at least with Thanksgiving, you get the enjoyment of the holiday atmosphere with the hope and anticipation of Christmas and New Year’s around the corner. Once New Year’s rolls around, what do we have? Spring time? Apply this theory to the pro wrestling world. The reason I love the Royal Rumble (January) so much is that it feels big, but we still have WrestleMania (March/April) to look forward to! Once WrestleMania is over, the calendar resets and everything starts anew! The storylines are mostly over! The reason I love late summer is that the promise of fall and the change in seasons still looms – we don’t have to reconcile with the inevitable passing of time just yet.
This is all to say that I hope you can take some quiet time to yourself before the social calendar loads back up for the Fall. It’s a nice practice. For one, it’s just a weird feeling at this time of year and I like things that feel weird. It’s that simple. We talk a lot about the standard issue seasonal weather – cold in winter, hot in summer. But, there are pockets on the calendar where they meld together and that’s where the sweet spot is. I like to sit in those moments – the evenings that creep back down into the low 80s after a brutal run of 100+ degree days. There is nothing like the relief of a cool breeze after record-setting heat. I swear there’s something restorative about it. There’s no better indicator of this than the Wilson County Fair – I can remember years when I had to change clothes after leaving and I can remember years when I needed a hoodie to walk through it. It marks a transition period. Take stock of what you can and begin planning for the future.
I hope you can enjoy late summer too.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
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