A Man for One Season

 

Most of you have probably heard of the 1966 award-winning movie A Man for All Seasons, but as I have aged, I have come to discover that unlike the movie title, I am really just a man for one season—Summer.  Here in Memphis where I have lived since 1970, we are blessed to witness all four seasons although sometimes our Spring and Fall are abbreviated versions.  So how have I come to this conclusion? Well, if you are interested in finding out, read on.

I have always known that I do not like cold weather.  Unless, that is, we get a nice snow, which makes everything beautifully white.  But snow is actually fairly uncommon in Memphis, and the big 8-inch snow shown above is a once in a generation event.  Indoors, the dry heat we use to keep us warm often causes the skin on my hands to crack and sometimes bleed.  I do try to use lotion on my hands but since this is not a habit of mine, I usually forget until I see the cracks in my skin.

And seeing leafless trees everywhere under blustery grey skies is also a depressing reminder of the cold and dead of winter.

And with the uncertainty of winter weather, travel can be precarious, quickly interrupted, or canceled altogether as it did a few years ago when we planned to fly to visit our daughter and her family in Seattle, at least that was before this snow arrived.

Spring, our next season, used to be one of my favorites but with climate change, has become a spring of severe storms.  Tornadoes spawned in the flat terrain of Arkansas to our west, have been coming more frequently throughout the midsouth.  In March of this year, we almost had weekly significant weather events in our area.

With spring comes welcome new growth but unfortunately also weeds in our flower beds.  We have several irritating varities that appear each year and have become the bane of my existence.  I used to spend hours pulling weeds and mulching but that too I am less inclined to do as I have aged.  So far, I have not found someone who I can hire to pull them with the same proficiency as I have always done.

Spring also brings lots of pollen and sadly as I have grown older, I have seemed to have developed an allergy to many of them.  Maybe this is just a part of aging.  Previously, the only way pollen bothered me was giving all of my cars a yellow hue.

I will save my favorite season for last so let’s jump to fall.

Whereas Spring is the visible renewal of life after the dead of winter, fall is the end of that’s life growth and presciently analogous to the autumn of our own life, a thought I seem to have more and more as I progress in age.  As the nights get cooler and the days shorter, the turning of the color of leaves to wonderful shades of yellow, orange, and red is always a welcome change.  But once the colors are gone and the leaves are all brown, they begin to fall which for me is an extra chore fishing and vacuuming them out of our pool  as we don’t close our pool in the winter.

As for the leaves mounding in the yard, I used to rake, mow, and vacuum them up myself but now I hire that function out.  Once all the leaves are gone and the trees bare, everything once again looks dead.

For some people, cooler days and nights are a welcome relief from the sometimes-record-breaking heat, but as for me, I am willing to endure a hot day over a cold day anytime.

So, summer for me is the best—my one season.

Summer is the three to four months when we really get to enjoy our pool…

…and it is usually the perfect weather for me to get out early in the morning and take a good run around the lake in our neighborhood.

With warmer weather, it is a great chance to do so many things outdoors…

…it is also the perfect time to grill out delicious meals…

…and it affords me the opportunity for some fun top-down driving in my little red sports car.

It is also a time we do most of our traveling…

…or have visits from our kid’s, their spouses, and our grandchildren.

So, if I have truly become a man of one season, then summer is my favorite time of year.  Spring then represents the advent of my favorite season and fall its exodus.  Winter for me, just a cold time to endure.

 Now that warm weather is here to stay and the summer solstice is not long away, know that I will be enjoying my favorite season and I hope you will enjoy your summer as well!