Summer Sundown by Liz Flaherty

In a town close to where we live, the arts council hosts the Summer Sundown series, where music is played for an hour each Sunday night. You take your lawn chair and sit and watch. You drink the complimentary water, get a free ticket to win a go-cup (which I haven't won) and you listen and applaud and talk to the other people there. Sometimes, like this past Sunday, it was so hot I was whining almost as loud as Sarah and Ron Luginbill were singing. (Sarah was hot, too--it wasn't just me.)

Now--surprise, surprise!--I am not a summer person. Once I no longer had kids in summer sports and activities, I was done with it. I just stay in the house most of the time, and hurry between it and the air conditioned car if I have to leave it. I consider any temperature above 80 degrees to be wholly unnecessary, high humidity to be a death threat from a ticked-off Mother Nature, and summer storms to be ... well, exciting, but also scary. 

Regardless of my complaints (which are fully justified), I have to admit that Summer Sundown is a delight all its own. Not just the weekly event in Logansport, Indiana, where we move our lawn chairs over and over to avoid the attack of the slowly falling sun, although there's a specialness to those performances. 

But no, it's the sundown itself. The few moments in time that make you say oh, look and stand in silent amazement until the sun slips into the horizon. While I have always been a sunrise person, the end of the day brings something with it. 

We talk about closure a lot, and it gives us that. We search for beauty in every day--it gives us that. For those of use who draw life and joy from color, the night sky and the summering of the earth gives us both strength and succor. Summer and its glorious sunsets bring us ice-cream days, baseball games and swimming pools, and gatherings when we revive, renew, and share memories with friends and family we don't see often enough. 

We share music and fireworks, water fights and slow swinging on the porch, lightning bug watches and strawberry moons. Did I say I wasn't a summer person? I know I did, and I really do like spring and fall better, but that does nothing to take away from the year's middle months and its sundowns.

As a writer, I have to laugh about the seasons, because writing usually doesn't "land right." Here at the end of June, I'm finishing a book in the Christmas season. What I write in December often follows a summer romance. Many times, I write about summer and fall together, because I love the transition time, but I actually am not sure when I write them. 

Right now, in a Book Funnel special, The Summer of Sorrow and Dance, is on sale for 99 cents. It's one of my favorite summer stories ever, and I'm sure Dinah and Zach enjoy more than one Summer Sundown.