Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I watched summer be laid to rest last Labor Day night as lifeguards removed all signs of life from the Leonia pool while a faithful few held on for the final moments with their beloved. This was more like a hospital vigil than anything I've ever seen. Everyone knew death was imminent, and wanted to be there for the final moments when they pulled the plug and summer succumbed to lifelessness. Any other day at the pool, there is laughing, splashing, relaxing, reading, and lap swimming. But yesterday, people at the pool were somber, ashen-faced, and tense. Summer was in critical condition, something hard to believe when temperatures remain so warm that you have to use the air conditioning at home. Surely we could swim well into October this year if someone would just let us do it. But they won't. During summer's final hour, lifeguards lifted the lap lane lines out of the pool and dragged them away while several adults swam their final laps of the year without any way to res...

The sun just ducked behind the tall oak tree that signals its final descent toward the west on this Memorial Day weekend Sunday. The pool here in Leonia opened to nearly ninety-degree heat. The children are yelling and splashing in the pool behind me. My chair back is toward them as I face the sun and trees whose leaves shimmer and glisten in the summer breeze that has come early early to Northern New Jersey. Summer has a gentle beauty and pace that brings the soul to life if you let it. The rest of the year life's pace is relentless, but these two scantily clad months of untucked shirts and flip flops refreshes us weary ones from winter's discontent. Summer is the season that belongs to youth, who haven't a care in the world while the pool is open and the schools are closed. At least on the way home from work, adults can roll down the car windows, turn up their stereos, and remember their careless summers of days gone by. The heat that arrived in May has stayed and the su...