June! It's here again! I know! Where has the time gone? It's a boring question to ask – your subjective feeling of the passage of time, feeling as if you were doing something yesterday (maybe planning to see Pappenheimer? That's Last Summer! Now here we are again, doing it again.
If summer is a play, June is its opening. If summer is a feeling, based on my recent conversations, it is either hope or fear. For me, it is all hope, all anticipation. Let the longer days unfold before us. Let us stretch out in them, lying on the grass, on the beach, or in the air-conditioned comfort of the living room in the afternoon, enjoying a warm nap.
Last weekend, I was out in the country and encountered a swarm of winged creatures—wasps, which I determined to be yellow jackets based on a scientific description I found on a pest control website: “In general, yellow jackets are much scarier looking than bees.” I didn't see a nest, but my porch was swarming with yellow jackets. Perhaps because I've spent most of my time in cities, where insect populations are predictable, I had almost forgotten about yellow jackets, wasps, and hornets, and the threat I'd always assumed their presence posed.
The fear of wasps is rooted in childhood, ingrained, an instinctive response. Don’t move, don’t look them in the eye, don’t even acknowledge their presence, otherwise. As a child, a wasp in the house was enough to send me running until an adult could expel it. Now, ostensibly an adult, I find myself observing swarms and feeling the fear surge, then ebb. Here are the heralds of the season, the welcoming committee of summer. I can sit with them and drink a glass of lemonade, if not completely relax, at least contemplate remedies. Where did the time go? When did the fear of being stung become manageable? I look at the wasps and think, “Yeah, you too.” If I’m going to open my arms to sunshine, barbecues, swims in the lake, and air that’s the exact same temperature as my skin, then the wasps are invited, too.
