The joy of summer

6/22/2007

IT IS once again summer. Bite into it. If you eat nothing else this week, eat a strawberry. Not a big, hard one from a plastic box. No, get to the farm or the farmers' market and get a cardboard carton of seeping red sweetness, so delicious there's no reason to even remove the stems. They won't be perfect for long, two weeks tops. Live dangerously. Don't even wash them.

Smell it. Honeysuckle. It's in the woods and in suburban gardens and old vines of it run through the city.

You don't need cologne when the outdoor air is spraying perfume. You do need sunscreen, though, and the buttery, coconut scent smells like vacation.

Dive into it. Let the cool, crisp chlorine smack your skin, or gently shower it by running through the sprinkler. Sit in the grass or pump your legs on the swings. Or walk through a spider web early in the morning or late in the evening.

Listen to it. The birds and the bugs and the boom boxes and the bicycle bells and the ice cream trucks.

Just look at it. It's a smile on the face of that 9-year-old who just finished fourth grade and isn't bored yet.

Summer is a festival for the senses. And it's fresh today. Enjoy it.