JUNE BEGINNING

Here we are, June.  In my mind summer starts in June, and it has always been the best month of the year, even before it became the month I was married in.  Twelve months in every year, but only one of them is perfection.

The dyed-in-the-wool Midwestern girl in me feels like a traitor admitting that I like the humidity.  For most people in the area, commiserating about the humidity is a major summer pastime, but I associate it most with long days of freedom and huge shady trees and the cool refuge that the basement became after a long bike ride.  The thickness in the air signals entry into the most wonderful time of the year.

Yesterday I was staring down a long evening at home alone, and instead of resigning myself to unwanted solitude I invited myself to the house of a friend who not only welcomed me but made pizza for the two of us.  We watched British television late into the night and by the time she saw me to my car, a warm day had devolved into refreshing darkness under stars and the footprints of clouds.  I drove home with the windows down on empty streets that had been busy when I'd seen them last.

It isn't that I don't appreciate spring or fall, or even parts of what winter brings.  But the best month of the year is June, when summer comes to Iowa.  To me perfection is mornings and evenings without a sweater and afternoons so heavy they beg you to nap.  I like taking an early walk and feeling the foreshadowing of an unbearably warm day.  I like waking up with the windows open to the sounds of the morning, because it redeems even nights that felt too hot for sleep.  I may be alone in this, but even the most uncomfortable parts of summer seem part of its allure.

The peonies that were planted in our side garden long before it belonged to us are just past their prime.  They're among the last of the flowers at the tail end of a hopeful season.  Spring is ending.  But June - June is just beginning to be beautiful.