It’s summertime for me. I know, it seems a little early. Summer camps haven’t started. The summer reading program at the library hasn’t begun. The kids aren’t even out of school yet.
My seasons tend to start early, though. I work with college students, so the seasons tend to go with the semesters and their breaks. Also, I live in Texas, so it starts to feel like summer here earlier than most places. In fact, it’s not so much fall, winter, spring, summer for me as it’s fall, holiday, spring, summer, because February might not always feel like winter here, but it always grades like spring. I turned in grades on Monday for Spring 2013 and have started working for summer conferences, so in my mind, I’ve transitioned.
It’s a new season. A new photo album on Facebook. A new goodbye, making way for a new hello.
I will miss my residents. Well, most of them. I will not miss teaching, but I’ll be ready to go back to it in August.
Summertime means conferences, the part of my job where I feel most like a fish out of water. Day desk has been rougher than I expected it to be, but conferences are even rougher. Training is my strength; customer service is not. And customer service is all that summer conferences entail. On the upside, it’s easier to leave behind when I leave work for the day. I gratefully flee. No chance of it following me home.
Summertime means reading. I read a lot anyway, but there’s more time for it in the summer. I am not reading many deep things this summer. I actually have romance novels on my list. I might flip out and throw some Proust in there or tackle Infinite Jest, but I make no promises.
Summertime usually means more writing, too. I am going to work on my Fishbowl story this summer. I am also submitting a few posts in a few places as a guest blogger. And I have the urge for the first time ever to try my hand at poetry, so perhaps I will do some of that, too. I am in love with poetry these days, from E. E. Cummings’s “I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach a ten thousand stars how not to dance,” to Pablo Neruda’s “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
But most important of all – summertime means snow cones and popsicles and yoga. Cooling off and calming down. It’s my sanest season.
M. Suzanne Terry 
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