I have the summer time blues. I'm caught up in one of my temporary longings to be someone else.
This time, I want to be someone in a housing development from the nineties, with seasonal decorations. Those knickknacks, you know, from gift shops that spring up and wither away like grass, with bobbles hanging in the windows and with Christmas ornaments for sale all year long.
I would have heavy, matched furniture sets in all the rooms and things like runners in the hallway, and plaques on the wall and I'd have friends that would come over for coffee, and I'd have matching mugs.
That's no fun.
I'd have mismatching mugs with slogans like "Whatever day it is, I hate it," and "Charlie's Print Shop." Or they'll have screen printings of Victorian teddy bears. My galley kitchen would be messy, with white Formica counter tops and a light above that was too bright and an older model oven, and one burner doesn't work.
I'll ride the bus to the office, where I work as a receptionist and at the end of the day, I'll forget that I have a pen stuck behind my ear. I'll make myself a breakfast for dinner- scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, and I'll watch cable, sitting on my second hand couch, with my tabby cat. I'll sleep in my futon bed with the lights from the passing cars sliding across the ceiling, listening to the roar of the traffic on the thruway outside my thin apartment walls.
That's depressing.
I know. I'll be English. I'll have a wild, over grown garden that smells like thyme. I'm an old lady, and I potter around my little, two room cottage with a shawl over my hunched back, delighting in the herbs, washing my bits of china, watching the sunlight filter through the flowering vines that hang over my kitchen window.
My hands will be wrinkled and covered with age spots and my sight will be dim. I'll see fairies in the evening light, in the back of the garden, and I'll believe in them, because I have passed through the sensible years and returned to the freedom of childhood. I'll be standing on the edge of a second childhood, a vaster, wilder childhood.
Gosh.
I did say that I was having the summer blues.
I guess I'll be me.
