One of the first movies I saw with my Dad was "Endless Summer" -- a classic documentary about the search for the perfect ocean wave upon which to surfboard. He liked the movie for many reasons, including the fact that one of the best waves found was near Capetown, South Africa.
At the time we saw the movie, we were living in Washington, DC, and I was old enough not only to go to the movies, but to perhaps get a small lesson in a father's pride for his home country. South Africa was just beginning to be known globally as a pariah for its policy of apartheid, and as much as my father disagreed with that policy, he still loved South Africa. This was a chance to show his sons that there was something else to offer from the land of this native son.
My thinking tonight is much more circumscribed, but it connects with the film and some of its themes. We've just returned from our 21st consecutive, two-week summer vacation in the same rental cabin at the same lake in southwestern Maine. It's a glorious occasion. We live in our swimsuits, read lots of books and magazines, water-ski, wakeboard, and eat outdoors every night when there is no rain. There is no phone, limited cellphone connectivity, and nothing but the smell of cool pine trees surrounding a freshwater lake. Our biggest worry each day is what kind of exercise will we do and what to eat for dinner.
Upon our return, however, I find myself on the downslope of Summer. Before vacation, I could leave the house as late as 9:15pm or even 9:30pm and still catch glimpses of the daylight in the fading dusk. Tonight, the door to daylight had been slammed shut by 9pm. For more than a month, the amount of daylight has slowly and almost imperceptibly been decreasing. Morning starts just a few minutes later, and nightfall begins just a few minutes earlier. The overall picture is still grand -- long days with bright skies and warm temperatures (I rode my mountain bike for a good, hard hour-long ride this morning at 6:30am in 60-degree temps) -- but the slightest hint of Summer's end increasingly appears on the border of each day, reminding us of what will come fast and hard in a just a few months.
In that regard, there is even something more ominous (perhaps) on the horizon. Death has come to two individuals we've known for a while in the Glenshaw family -- a neighbor and a longtime family friend, the latter as close to a second mother for my wife, Elizabeth. Neither death was unexpected, but what comes with 21 years of lovely summer vacations in the same cabin in Maine is also an awareness of our own mortality and the mortality of those who remain next to us whose age is greater than our own.
Elizabeth's Mom will be 80 next year. My own Mother turned 75 years old this year. It's a mere 23 years until I turn 70 years old. We resist, but Elizabeth and I feel age creeping into our lives. This morning, we both awoke very early to exercise before work, and found ourselves fast asleep on the couch by 6pm, before supper. Sure, we are fit, but we are not immortal.
And Summer is not endless.
Much awaits for the remainder of this season of Summer -- the 250th anniversary celebration of the founding of Lyme, NH; more triathlon races; perhaps, even another return to our vacation spot in Maine and certainly a few weekends at the lake in Vermont. Friends and family will visit our home. We will sit on the back porch, eat pizza, drink wine, and laugh. We will enjoy the rest of Summer, even though it is not endless.
At the time my Father and I saw "Endless Summer," it was hard to imagine that apartheid would end. The movie was more of a story about our own pursuit of perfection and immortality, and the quest for eternal youthfulness. But as we consider that story, we also recognize -- sometime with joy and sometimes with sadness -- its lessons about the end of the stories we know and can tell and do live.
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