Summerland

"A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.” Summerland by Michael Chabon

I’m afraid of summer. It’s true. To me hot weather means sleepless sticky nights listening to the roar of fans and oppressive days trying to move as little as possible and eating only cold food. While other people lament that it’s cold and rainy in June, I am thrilled and wish it could last through August. When I see 90’s in the upcoming forecast my heart turns, ironically, cold with dread.

In my experience, people who long for hot weather also have air-conditioning. And until now I have never had air-conditioning. Or, more accurately, never Used air-conditioning. Even in the parsonages that had it my parents would never turn it on. Air conditioning (along with heat, restaurants nicer than McDonalds and more than two pairs of shoes) fell into the category of “profligate” in my parent’s vocabulary.

So it was with great trepidation that I moved to North Carolina just in time for one of the awful summers that Dan has been describing to me in horrifying detail ever since we first met. My worst fears were confirmed when we had ninety-degree heat in April just shortly after I drove into town.

Fortunately for me, May relented and the weather was so gorgeous that my fear of the upcoming months imprisoned by the heat actually drove me out to explore my new world and have the small adventures I have previously documented before it was too late. Fear is a great motivator.

Now at the end of June, however, the heat is here to stay. (Although Dan is quick to remind me that it is still getting cooler at night so there is much worse to come.)

Indeed, after a sweltering trudge home from the gym Thursday afternoon, I wasn’t sure that I was up for an outdoor summery activity that evening. But Dan had already purchased tickets for the two of us and his dad to go to my first ever Durham Bulls baseball game and I wasn’t about to miss dollar hot dog night! (Hot dogs are also great motivators.) Both the team and the movie are a big deal down here and the old Durham Athletic Park, at which Bull Durham was filmed, is very close to our house and familiar to me. This was going to be my first time to the new Durham Athletic Park however and it turned out to be a very nice facility indeed.

By the time we got to the “DAP” the sun was already on it’s way down and I found it quite pleasant actually to sit there, watching the light in the sky fade into the romantic glow of the stadium lights. The team came out and warmed up and the grounds crew sprayed and raked in a most professional manner. The fans trickled in as the game got under way. All the while the temperature slowly dropped to around 82 degrees and there was a lovely breeze.

Our team was completely pathetic. The first conference on the mound was after the second pitch and we Almost had a grand slam in the first inning, which turned out to be very disappointing long pop fly and third out instead. After that things only got worse. Our starting pitcher was terrible and they didn’t take him out until the middle of the fourth. By that time he had already given up 9 runs and Rochester topped that off to an even dozen before the game was over. We answered with a resounding zero runs.

Still… I enjoyed it. In the midst of the hubbub of the restless crowd and the silly promotional games and announcements there was something so peaceful about sitting outside on a lovely summer evening, watching the slow, slow pace of the game, seeing every deliberate action of the players and officials, listening to the lilting song of the lemonade and snow cone and cotton candy vendors. I felt myself outside of it all observing and at the same time an active participant in the sprawling organism of the game. And my fearful heart began to thaw a bit.

It will be a long process I’m sure… but I think I might be beginning to make my peace with summer.

Have I mentioned that I have air-conditioning?