*Summer Lovin' - Lovin' Summer

When I think about the "pains of love" I always flash on summertime. Maybe it was the heat (which never got too severe in Seattle anyway), or just the extra time of vacation, affording us the ability to focus even more on our lovelorn lives, but everything just seemed that much more torrid in this steamier season.

Sneaking out of the house summer nights was more comfortable too, you just had to be careful to be back before the sun rose painfully, at 5am in June. I remember running up hills carrying my shoes, and praying to the god I wasn't sure I believed in, that my early rising father wouldn't be up yet drinking his coffee.

It didn't happen that way every time, if I was that tardy it was usually because I had drowsed off at the boyfriend's apartment, victim to the body's natural need to sleep. I don't know now how I did it - functioned on so little sleep, for so long, and I speculate that some of my insomnia and "sleep issues" now might come from the continual disruption of any kind of normal night rhythm.

But I loved those summer nights in Seattle, the sun setting over the Puget Sound and Olympic mountains as I walked away from the boredom of my family's house towards the boyfriend or the party or anything else more interesting. I still love summer but it feels very different in Milwaukee; there's the more dramatic heat, and the humidity, but also no mountains. It's something to get used to - when I first moved here I kept having a specific sort of wish or almost-hallucination: looking to the setting sun wanting the clouds to be mountains, but they never were.

Nevertheless, today was a great summer day in Milwaukee, even without the mountains. We went to the local Greek Festival, after annoying chore of having to quickly tidy up for THREE showings of the house we are so desperately trying to sell. Pray god this last effort will be worth it!

Got there around 2 o'clock, surveyed the food (the biggest reason to go, can't believe how much I love Greek food, must have been Greek in a former life is all I can think), called my closest friend in Milwaukee who's just getting back from a trip to Greece (in case she was back already and could join us), thought of the novel I'm so recently enthralled by, authored by a Greek no less.** Small coincidences, sure, but they intrigued me nonetheless.

So we got beers and traversed the small grounds (small by the standards of the WI State Fair, which comes in August), walked around the screaming kids and rides, remembering what a big deal it was to go to the WA State Fair in Puyallup, where I first rode the "Zipper" and loved it, how it turned you upside-down and all around, until you thought you'd be sick or faint with pleasure. I felt like a little kid myself, just being in the fair atmosphere again, and was pleased to see the Zipper still existed, all rusty buckets and chains, they hadn't even felt the need to rename it.

The warmth beat down on us, we got water and made sure my husband had enough sunscreen on, lest we tempt the fate of heatstroke like the poor little kids in their Hellenic dress, lined up for the traditional dancing, They wore red velvet tops with gold brocade, and matching hats with tassels, some of them with white skirts, some with skirts "the precise cerulean blue of the old country's air" (The Virgin Suicides, pg.166), all with funny, clunky shoes they threatened to trip over. And they were terrible - but we applauded them, with love and abandon, anyway.

Later, after lamb dinner and chatting with some of the old Greek ladies sitting on their geriatric walkers in front of us, we idly watched the little boy on the empty dance floor, who couldn't decide what was more fun - running in circles to the Greek music or drinking his very large orange soda. I leaned into David, loving that we'd come to the festival so sort-of spontaneously, loving that it was free to get in (now that we have no/little income), loving the sexy food that still greased my lips, loving the waning sun on my face and the anticipation of a Milwaukee summer night yet to come.

*Anyone who got the allusion to "Grease" - yes, this was intentional, and a deliberate pun (get it, Greece - Grease?)
[Danny]
Summer lovin' had me a blast
[Sandy]
Summer lovin' happened so fast
[Danny]
I met a girl crazy for me
[Sandy]
Met a boy cute as can be
[Both]
Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those summer nights

And was there ever a movie to more fuel the fires of adolescent romantic fantasies than that movie? Hard to tell who the seven year old me was more in love with, John Travolta or Olivia Newton-John or even the whole idea of the 50's itself. To be a girl, in high school and in love, wearing a poodle skirt, singing on the bleachers in the sun, going to the drive-in movies and dances, just - wow.

**The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides