Farewell Summer

"To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee."
~Emily Dickinson

Summertime. I picture myself reading in a hammock or at the beach with a book under a colorful umbrella, sipping iced tea. Although moments like that are actually rare for me, summer symbolizes a time of relaxation, of enjoying the outdoors and some sunshine, of being more carefree.

In early June, during the unofficial start of summer, I read and reviewed Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I'd always associated this author solely with science fiction, until I was introduced to Dandelion Wineon Christie's blog, Belly Acre Farms, which led me to learn more about this book. After reading Dandelion Wine, I vowed to read the sequel, Farewell Summer, at the summer's end.

And here we are. A new season is about to begin. The autumnal equinox is on Sept. 22. And although we may still have some hot weather in Southern California, the changes are becoming evident. The days are getting shorter. The kids are back in school. The leaves are beginning to change colors (we do see the burnished colors of fall here, although not as dramatically as elsewhere). And somehow, everything seems a bit more somber, moody even.

"Clouds passed over the lawn. And when the sun came out, in the pantry, Grandma almost whispered, Summer, farewell. "
~Farewell Summer, Ray Bradbury

Published in 2006, after a nearly fifty year gap, Farewell Summer is the sequel to Dandelion Wine, which was published in 1957. The story in Farewell Summer takes place in 1929, set during an Indian summer in fictitious Green Town, Illinois (based on Waukegan, Ill.). In the book the summer is actually lingering into October--an Indian summer--but Douglas Spaulding and his friends know that it won't last much longer. Douglas, now 14, and his cohorts, have waged a civil war against the old timers in the neighborhood, especially Mr. Quartermain from the school board. This book takes place two years after Dandelion Wine, and the boys are at the height of their youthful exuberance, full of mischief and prone to pranks. They do not want to get old like Quartermain--or to have the responsibilities of the adult world, which loom on the horizon. The boys think that if they stop the clock atop the courthouse they can extend the summer, by literally stopping time. But time marches on; it can't be stopped.

Or can it? I wonder if, in a way, Ray Bradbury does successfully stop time, or at least slow its passage. By waiting nearly half a century between the two books, he does, in a sense, freeze time. This book takes up where the other one left off. I'm sure Bradbury could have finished the sequel sooner--was such a long pause intentional? And maybe the idea is also that our internal and eternal memories, of the summer or any other time, make us ageless. We still have our childhood, our youth, inside of us, to be summoned at will, to be remembered, to make us smile, to give us more time, like an everlasting summer.