as irony would have it, i live in a place where it's Summer eight out of every twelve months.

so here i am, on my three-day holiday weekend. i'm reclined on my couch, laptop perched next to me. i feel the cool breeze from the ceiling fan as it circulates the air-conditioned air over me, gently (and hearing that maddening intermittent tick-tick-tick that would indicate a slight imbalance which, interestingly enough, stops when i cast an annoyed glance in its direction...but i digress).

somewhere outside, someone is mowing a lawn. that low hum brings me back to my childhood in an instant, and is an integral part of the very definition of Summer in The Dictionary of Dawn. we didn't have an air conditioner when i was a kid, save for the open windows & the God-sent breeze to cool the indoors, or a shade tree & some lemonade if the heavy motionless air (or your Gram) drove you outside. on the very hottest dog days of late July into August, Gram might bring out the coveted fan, with it's transparent blue plastic blades to oscillate quietly in whichever room she happened to be in at the time, making that the room *we* wanted to be in at the time, draping ourselves over whatever we could find that would put us in the path of the electrically-generated breeze. until such point that we drove her crazy--whether by squabbling, knocking something over, asking too many questions, or, i suspect, blocking the breeze from reaching *her*--and we were banished to the aforementioned shade tree outside.

oops. inadvertent side trip down Memory Lane. where was i...?

oh yeah, lawnmowers.

what with said opened windows, inevitably someone was mowing their lawn for what seemed like the entire Summer, and it became the daytime soundtrack to the Summer months, until swapped with the cricket song of After Dark. if not Gram or Gramp or Dad, then one of the neighboring aunties or uncles or cousins. or the few unrelated neighbors who had infiltrated the otherwise family-tree forest corner of Chippens Hill. or someone half a mile away as the sound would hover on the thick still air & carry for what seemed half a town away.

whomever the mower belonged to at any particular moment in time, it's a sound i associate, immediately and inextricably, with Summer. it ranks right up there with barbecues, baseball, lightning bugs, watermelon, fireworks and running around barefoot. it takes just that solitary sound to transport me back to days when Summer was the ultimate anticipation, overshadowed only by Christmas morning, and with a pumpkin-bucket brimming with Halloween loot hot on its heels. the sound of a lawnmower, and all the fond (albeit sweaty and mosquito-bitten) memories, always make me smile and feel that lazy sort of relaxation one only associates with the sultry days of Summer.

but as i sit in my climate-controlled environment in my grown-up world, where i have to pay the lofty Summer electric bill and i don't get two & a half months respite from my job (at least, not without serious consequence), i have to say...

...i think i only like Summer in theory and retrospect.

is there anywhere on this great Earth that is perpetually Autumn?