Nights of Grey Satin

 

 

Nothing is  more romantic than a summer night. Whether at the shore or Little Italy, or on the porch or riding in the car through sleepy streets, nothing compares to a summer night. Just the phrase, "an evening in summer" conjures up for me terraces lit by Japanese lanterns and the men in white dinner jackets twirling women with gardenias tucked behind their ears.

 

 

 

Full of Puck-worthy mystery, a summer's eve holds the promise of thunderous firework booms and the silent expectancy of The Big Dipper. Huge, ripe moons hang like peaches over days' ends, ready to be picked. Nightfall ushers in sprays of constellations and whirls of stardust more brilliant  than snowflakes.

 

 

 

No matter how tired we are when we get home from work, the evenings draw us outside. We just can't imagine coming home and flipping on the TV and sitting on the couch while outside there are blooms to dead head, stray weeds to pull, dogs to walk on sidewalks lit by neighbor's lights, and somewhere, always, the sound of the ice cream truck slowly coming up the street.

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Supper is always on the porch, even in the rain if it is not blowing sideways onto us. We sit there long after we eat,  and only reach out to turn on the light when we realize we are squinting at the page of the newspaper because it has gotten too dark to see

 

Dusk is long and soft, deepening into purple stains of shadows. There is no harsh winter drop of darkness like the clap of the director's slate yelling, "cut" to a winter's  day.  No, these evenings are like a  woman  slithering into a  negligee of gray satin, arms over head, fabric gliding over bare shoulders with just a frisson of rustle over skin, stopping where it barely skims the foot,  a hint of ankle catching the moonlight.

 

There's something very cozy about sitting in the yellow pool of a reading lamp while all around you are the dark outlines of the trees and the sparks of fireflies. In the house I grew up in, long after  I went to bed, I would hear my father slapping down the cards in a game of solitare on the big round redwood picnic table on the porch and smell his pipe smoke climbing to the second story to lull me to sleep.

 

At The Cottage, we pile into the car around 9:30 and go for the last coffee of the day or a piece of fudge. Then we take Beach Road up the hill and down the long glide to the ocean. The poor doggies have to stay home because even at 11:00 at night, there's someone at the gate to remind us, "No Bow Wows!"  We hold onto each other and giggle in the darkness, intent on not falling off the walkways and running into a skunk. Or zombies. We fall silent as we crane our necks to take in a huge  sky as black at pitch studded with stars so deep that we feel ourselves falling up into The Milky Way. Oh! A shooting star! It's the Perseids Shower! Watch out - I smell  skunk! Or is it a whiff of pot from those kids down the dunes? 

 

Summer nights don't end at the Sagamore Bridge, however. As I type this,  my old green glass student lamp is next to me and my arm is up against my hooked wool lobster pillow. I sitting facing the north and there is just enough daylight in the corner of the sky at at 9:06 to see the leafy scrim of my backyard elms. A few errant firecrackers from the beach clubs echo across the city.The labradors run off the porch every time they hear the sound of a dog chain or voices or footsteps on the street. Every time.  They butt their heads up against the screen door and fly out the door like bullets. If the door stays ajar just so, the younger dog knows how to stick his head in and nudge it open. Now if only the Mama dog would learn the same, and if they would both stop charging out the door to bark at every living thing, we would be able to sit companionably and read to each other stories of great interest. You know, like people who find million dollar baseball card collections in their great aunt's attic, or the size of a giant squid found off the coast of Japan. Summer stories that require no heavy lifting.

 

That's what summer nights are about: a little bit of whimsy, cozy reading lights, candles flickering on the table, dogs snapping their jaws at fireflies, and the relaxation that comes when you know that a nice screen mesh stands between you and the mosquitos. With any luck, there will be a full moon that sails above the trees like a schooner, and the sound of my neighbor's sprinkler will be a metronome to sleep by. And with any hope, Mr. Pom will finally get up off the chaise lounge and turn it sideways to barricade the screen door, so we can trap the dogs inside and allow the neighbors and ourselves to get some peace.