Fall is absolutely
my favorite season. Winter is cold (horrible) but at least has the upside of
cocoa and my birthday. Spring is warm and lovely and green.
But there's
something about the way summer smells that is magical. Like when your skin
smells of sunscreen and outside and maybe a tiny bit of sweat so it feels like
you absorbed the sunshine and get to emit back to the world a little bit. Like
when the bathroom smells of chlorine or salt as bathing suits and towels hang
to dry, summoning the refreshing feel of water on your skin on a hot day. Like
when you can tell someone is grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, taking advantage
of hours of daylight in the long evenings.
Summer comes with
the sort of smells that just make you feel alive and hungry, ready to get
outside and gobble up all the delicious daylight you can before the Earth tilts
away from the sun. As though days that seem to last forever mean the good times
will, too, and any troubles will pass like a Carolina thunderstorm, here one
minute but gone to reveal clear skies the next.
Because summer is
the time when youth runs free, no school or job to worry about, capturing those
smells to save up for winters and the years when free time is harder to come
by. And then, in a break from the everyday humdrum work week, you catch a whiff
of sunscreen and chlorine and feel unburdened for a moment, and life is good
again.
For real, though,
I'm ready for fall. Two months of summer is enough for me.
