Well, it's now official: Summer has begun. I know this because I've spent the last day and a half lying about, in bed, on the couch or in a lawn chair, reading The Short History of a Prince (by Jane Hamilton) from cover to cover. It's an absolutely fabulous book, loaned to me by my very own Emma, who has grown up to be quite the fun book buddy, I'm happy to say. Not the least of its charm is that it is set in suburban Chicago - a suburb called Oak Ridge, in fact, which does not actually exist, but is a nice amalgalm of all the Oaks and Ridges that do exist: Oak Park, Park Ridge, Oak Lawn, and so on - all older suburbs, closer in to the city. At one point the protagonist is wondering how his much-younger sister ended up living in Schaumburg, a megaburb about 35 miles out from Chicago:

There was nothing good about Schaumburg, in his opinion, not the mall around which the town had recently been built, not the corporate headquarters, not the concrete sprawl of it, not even the sweet backward intentions of the planners who wanted to build a Main Street with a mock downtown . . . There was a quietness about Lucy's street, as if each house were stranded on its own lawn. It was hard to believe that men and women were really behind their closed paneled doors, couples thinking, cooking, making love, banging on a piece of wood down in the basement, something, anything for home improvement. The shades were drawn all down the street as if a president had been assassinated, as if one a day got a bullet through his head.

That's just about exactly what I think of Schaumburg, myself. (As far as the book, that's just the tip of the iceberg. The story is intricately plotted, involving three subplots and many layers, all of which work marvelously well together. The protagonist is a gay man, about exactly my age. I can't think of a known fiction-reader among those of you who read here regularly who wouldn't love this book.)

Anyhow, aside from the book being splendid, there's the matter of my having finally relaxed and unwound to the point where I could spend a whole day and a half reclining and reading a book without twitching with nervous energy or being wracked with guilt about what I'm not doing instead. Finally, the obligations are quelled for the summer, the whine of nervous worry is silent.

And also, the summer is beginning to take a splendid shape. It's a vastly different one from the shape I'd imagined; just a few short weeks ago I was wondering if I'd be lonely this summer, if I'd need things to fill up my (mostly solitary) time. Now my time isn't solitary at all: Emil's home all day, too. We have more unstructured time together right now than we've had in the past twenty five years; we wake up in the morning and say, "What do you want to do today?"

The lush vacation feel is helped along by the fact that our back deck is so-ooo darned pleasant in the morning. From about daybreak until midafternoon (about 2:00, say), about a third of the deck is in shade. It's almost always breezy here, so even on the most sweltering days (today, for instance, when it's supposed to reach over 90 for the first time this summer), the deck is an extraordinarily pleasant spot on which to sit and drink the morning coffee, reading novels.

It all reminds me of my favorite summers from my childhood (when we lived in Royal Oak, and) which I spent mostly alone, following my whims. I would climb the tree in the back yard and read for hours on end, or I'd ride my bike through the neighborhood, wandering aimlessly down one street and then down another, daydreaming. I'd spend part of the day swimming in our back yard (small, above ground) pool. (On hot days I'd be there from the time my mother kicked me outside - she had no patience with anyone sitting inside and reading if the sun was shining - until right before I went to bed or until the mosquitoes became unbearable, whichever came first.) As Rob wrote the other day, one of the best parts of an academic job is the ability to re-live those long, lazy summers . . . and that's precisely what I intend to do.

Stay tuned for ad hoc plans as they develop. For today the plan is keeping cool . . . now that I've finished my novel, I think perhaps I'll knit for a while . . . maybe down in the basement where everything is cooler . . .