Spring is here, the grass has 'riz', I wonder where the flowers is?
When I was young, this rhyme made me squeeze my eyes shut tight in delightful anticipation of spring. And if spring was coming then summer was coming. Summer meant school vacation, time with my family going camping to favorite places, especially Monument Valley. It also meant I could ride my Stingray bike, run with my dog Midnight, have slumber parties in the basement playing Ouija board with my friends and all the fun things I couldn't do in winter. I followed the rules and my life was, well, busy.
Summer is no longer rainbow sprinkles on vanilla cones at Dairy Queen, but Metallica drums exploding behind and in and under my skull. The land of swimming pools and boy-watching is now haunted-house shutters and blackened, swamp-cooler depressions laced with never-ending attemps to wake up and do something.
Summer stands for those comforting weakling shadows darting past my eyes, losing the race with the bullying, screaming light-wielding baseball bats that beat at my head and eyes as if I were dragging my skull along a 1000-degree wooden picket fence. No sunglasses or umbrellas can fight back against such an attacker.
People laugh loudly with happiness and I shrink into the weakling shadow's arms. Children scream in delight and I shrink to the ground. If only I had a pair of hunter's earguards or a vise grip, or earplugs or a hammer for heaven's sake. Something to smash the devil out of my head and leave it bloodied on the burning concrete of hell.
So I dash from work in my hat and sunglasses to my air-conditioned car with its sun visors and tinted windows then across town and into my swamp-cooler chilled trailer with the mini-blinds closed tight and slam the door and beg God for the people next door to at least turn the bass down a little bit on the stereo in their Lexus.
Finally the precious spongy orange bullets make their way out of the box and I twist and squish and shove them into my ears until there is a thick air pocket between the outside world and my mind. I snap the sound-reducing headphones on and dig my head underneath a pillow.
Nice person for my husband to come home to, don't you think?
But I have my relief at long last.
I will call the Doc tomorrow so we can talk about dealing with the rest of summer's delightful playful, digestion of my mental state.
