Could this be the summer of love? It is summer. Days are long and sweet, hot and dry. Nights are cool and the sound of engines and car radios drifts through the open window, young people out cruising on the thoroughfares. August is here, yellow heads of goldenrod along the roadside warn of summer’s impermanence.
White sails glide along the lake – on shore, the summer camp season rises to a crescendo. In recent summers, I have been pressed into chaperone service at local inter-camp dances. There’s very little to do, really, the mosquitoes do a better job than any adult at discouraging would-be canoodlers from wandering outside.
Little has changed at summer-camp dances. A glitter ball slowly rotates over the dining hall floor; tables pushed to one side. The songs are different than those of my youth, but the subject matter is still the same – undying love. Campers divide by gender and poke around, nervously glancing at the objects of their timid desire. The counselors, not much older, more or less do the same. All too soon the music stops, the lights come up and a school bus carries half the crowd off into the night. The subdued remainder trudge off to their lumpy bunks, love songs echoing in their ears, adolescent aching in their hearts.
Could this be the summer of love? It has now been over a year since Vermont legalized civil unions, the marriage-like joining of a man and man or a woman and a woman. Contrary to the doomsday forewarned by some of my fellow citizens, Vermont society has not come unhinged. No threat to traditional marriage has appeared. Marriage and divorce rates are about the same as they were before the institution of civil union existed. Young men and women still meet, fall in love and get married, or just make out in the back seat of dad’s car at the Sunset Drive-In. Maybe I need to get out more, but I have yet to hear of a dairy farmer up in Franklin County deserting his wife and kids to run off to Greenwich Village with a guy in leather pants.
Adrienne and I – yes, we are still together – attended our first civil union a few weeks ago. In some respects, it was a backyard ceremony virtually indistinguishable from the many we’ve attended over the years. On the other hand, it was neat to watch the birth of a new ritual. A generation from now, I’m sure people will be having “big, traditional” civil unions, because that’s what their families expect, but in this summer of love, there can be no doubt about authenticity.
Before the exchange of vows, each of the grooms stood and said a few words. One told his memories of being 17 and realizing he was gay. He said he then foresaw a future in which there would always be a separation between his professional and his personal life, a wall between his community life and his home life, empty spaces between his friends and his family and his lover. He saw for himself a life of loneliness and distance, all because he was the way he was, and in that realization, he despaired. “And today,” he said, “I stand here and look at all of you and I realize just the opposite is true.”
Could this be the summer of love? It could well be. It’s August, the crickets sing in the evening, but there’s still time. Take yourself back to that adolescent ache, to the yearning for another promised by those popular songs. Maybe we shut that yearning away, maybe we learned to be practical and told ourselves life is not based on sentimental songs. But maybe, if we take a breath of sweet summer air and spend a quiet moment with our heart, we may realize that person on our front porch is the one we’ve been in love with all our lives. And if we realize what that sustaining love means to us, how could we have ever tried to deny it to anyone else?
Maybe we just needed a reminder – it’s what summer camp dances and civil unions can do.
The Summer of Love
Could this be the summer of love? It is summer. Days are long and sweet, hot and dry. Nights are cool and the sound of engines and car radios drifts through the open window, young people out cruising on the thoroughfares. August is here, yellow heads of goldenrod along the roadside warn of summer’s impermanence.
White sails glide along the lake – on shore, the summer camp season rises to a crescendo. In recent summers, I have been pressed into chaperone service at local inter-camp dances. There’s very little to do, really, the mosquitoes do a better job than any adult at discouraging would-be canoodlers from wandering outside.
Little has changed at summer-camp dances. A glitter ball slowly rotates over the dining hall floor; tables pushed to one side. The songs are different than those of my youth, but the subject matter is still the same – undying love. Campers divide by gender and poke around, nervously glancing at the objects of their timid desire. The counselors, not much older, more or less do the same. All too soon the music stops, the lights come up and a school bus carries half the crowd off into the night. The subdued remainder trudge off to their lumpy bunks, love songs echoing in their ears, adolescent aching in their hearts.
Could this be the summer of love? It has now been over a year since Vermont legalized civil unions, the marriage-like joining of a man and man or a woman and a woman. Contrary to the doomsday forewarned by some of my fellow citizens, Vermont society has not come unhinged. No threat to traditional marriage has appeared. Marriage and divorce rates are about the same as they were before the institution of civil union existed. Young men and women still meet, fall in love and get married, or just make out in the back seat of dad’s car at the Sunset Drive-In. Maybe I need to get out more, but I have yet to hear of a dairy farmer up in Franklin County deserting his wife and kids to run off to Greenwich Village with a guy in leather pants.
Adrienne and I – yes, we are still together – attended our first civil union a few weeks ago. In some respects, it was a backyard ceremony virtually indistinguishable from the many we’ve attended over the years. On the other hand, it was neat to watch the birth of a new ritual. A generation from now, I’m sure people will be having “big, traditional” civil unions, because that’s what their families expect, but in this summer of love, there can be no doubt about authenticity.
Before the exchange of vows, each of the grooms stood and said a few words. One told his memories of being 17 and realizing he was gay. He said he then foresaw a future in which there would always be a separation between his professional and his personal life, a wall between his community life and his home life, empty spaces between his friends and his family and his lover. He saw for himself a life of loneliness and distance, all because he was the way he was, and in that realization, he despaired. “And today,” he said, “I stand here and look at all of you and I realize just the opposite is true.”
Could this be the summer of love? It could well be. It’s August, the crickets sing in the evening, but there’s still time. Take yourself back to that adolescent ache, to the yearning for another promised by those popular songs. Maybe we shut that yearning away, maybe we learned to be practical and told ourselves life is not based on sentimental songs. But maybe, if we take a breath of sweet summer air and spend a quiet moment with our heart, we may realize that person on our front porch is the one we’ve been in love with all our lives. And if we realize what that sustaining love means to us, how could we have ever tried to deny it to anyone else?
Maybe we just needed a reminder – it’s what summer camp dances and civil unions can do.