Summer in Progress
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On the cusp of September, suspended between the smell of sunscreen and of freshly sharpened pencils, August is the beginning of the end. The days are long, but there’s a thrumming sense of urgency: whatever I want to say I did on my summer vacation needs to happen n-o-w; the arbitrary framework of education burned into our collective unconscious. Whether you’re six or 16 or, I assume, 60—the countdown is on.
You remember being tucked into bed when it was still light outside, feeling the stark injustice of stolen end-of-summer possibility at a nearly molecular level. Later, you’d run out the clock on your midnight curfew, climbing chain-link fences to jump into the same pools you once had to break from at :45 on the hour. Clothes abandoned next to a lounger, you’d get out shivering but with your body arranged just so. Years later this would help inform an immediate, lightning-bolt understanding of the concept of the male gaze, but at the time it was just part of the fun.
There were summers you avoided heartbreak and others where it was inevitable, and August never failed to bring this pendulum into sharp focus. The years you thought it was okay to tan segued into the ones where you realized it really, really was not, and you eventually made a tenuous sort of peace with your cellulite, opting to just go ahead and wear the f-cking shorts. It should be noted that “eventually” took a good long while, because understanding said gaze does not elicit an immediate unburdening (but you knew that already).
Some Augusts were nearly perfect, and others never ended up happening at all: the solo-Midwestern-road-trip fantasy that just didn’t hold the same appeal after turning 30; the European backpacking re-do in which you spent exactly none of your wild and precious life arguing with an ex-boyfriend in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain. You fear that listing the countries might have made the experience sound chic. It was not.
The remainder of this particular summer isn’t asking for much beyond the usual hierarchy of 90º needs: your stack of unread books rendered a few titles shorter, a couple of hours spent in an ice-cold movie theater. Sunscreen inventory levels such that you don’t (once again) make your dermatologist sigh when you go in to re-up your topicals. Also someone should really make ribs, but you are certain it is not going to be you.
The first hint of fall will bring an overwhelming urge to make eye contact with your sweater collection, and regret at never having bought a 12-foot skeleton will come in waves. Until then, you have four weeks left of an August that you're guaranteed to never meet again—spend them wisely, and I will try to do the same.
“Summer in Progress” emailed out 8.1.2025 with newsletter-exclusive extras. Subscribe here.