Turn! Turn! Turn! The Season is Summer
Remember when you were six or 12 and summer was a three-month recess and the only interruption to your fun was being called inside for dinner?
Then adulthood arrives and carefree summers depart.
One of my earliest summers of freedom was 1965. This was also the year The Byrds’ version of “Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)” hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
I have this song stuck in my head because everywhere I turn, turn, turn, I see reminders that the season now is summer. I also hear, taste, smell and feel summertime’s touch.
Here are a few recent encounters, broken down into the five senses.
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Sight.
Four girls and a boy, all between the ages of about four and six, playing on the grass at a local park. Specifically, they are racing around a small mud bog created by a faulty sprinkler.
The giggling grows louder. The kids grow wilder. One of the girls cuts a corner too closely and a sneaker gets sucked off in the mud.
The laughter, of course, instantly doubles in decibels. Soon another shoe is snatched. Instead of an obstacle, the mud bog has become the main attraction.
Did I mention the children are wearing nice clothes, not swimming suits?
I should also mention they are being watched by the mother of one of them. More accurately, she is a contender for Mom of the Year. I say this because of her reply when I passed by and commented on – and laughed at – the messy delight.
“It’ll all wash off,” she said, smiling happily.
What a beautiful attitude. And what a beautiful summer it promises to be for those five kids.
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Sound.
Watching a collection of elementary school-age kids play different games at a summer day camp is fun, but listening to them is the real joy.
For example, judging from the laughter and squeals of delight, even playing in mud can’t compare to throwing spongy playground balls at one another. Part of this is surely the novelty because many schools have banned dodge ball. Safety issues? In half an hour of battle no tears are shed, no Band-Aids required.
Meanwhile, if you have never heard a game of outdoor musical chairs that begins with 30 kids and 29 chairs and one boom box, you are missing out.
This, however, paled on the noise meter measuring the fun of a supervised water balloon battle!
In other words, this 2013 day camp is a success because it duplicates the everyday summer life of kids growing up in the 1960s.
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Taste.
A lot of things just seem to taste better in the summer. Hamburgers, hotdogs or basically anything fresh off the barbecue, for example. Watermelon, certainly. All county fair foods. Iced tea and lemonade, margaritas and beer.
But it says here nothing improves more in tastiness during the summer (and this is saying something because it’s delicious year-round) than ice cream. Amazingly, ice cream may taste its very best not on a blistering summer day but rather on a dreamy warm midsummer night.
Rocky Road, to my taste buds, is best of all.
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Smell.
Just as hearing an old song can be a time machine of sorts, so too can scents.
Few things transport me back to my Wonder Years of summers as quickly and powerfully as the smell of sunscreen filling the air at the pool or beach.
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Touch.
Speaking of the beach and swimming pools, one of summer’s special senses of touch can also be seen and heard: the “ouch-ouch-ouch” and “hot-hot-hot” mutterings of someone as you watch them quick-stepping barefoot across broiling sand or cement.
Meanwhile, instead of the soles, summer romances touch souls and hearts with held hands and kissed lips.
Turn, turn, turn. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
And summer, taking the best from the verses in the Book of Ecclesiastes, is a time to laugh and dance and embrace and love and cast time away.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.