We are in the dark green of summer. The fragrant flowers have passed. The chill autumn air and dying leaves await us in two months. Fields are overgrown with coneflowers and sunflowers—bright and hot, lacking scent. Now is the time for rose gardens and sundresses. It is the time for love.
Me: I spent the day scrubbing toilets, washing blankets, and trimming back the green in my yard. My raspberries tower over me. My Russian Sage tramples over the other flowers as if they were Ukraine-it is my duty to reinforce boundaries. But what of love? In the autumn of my life, summer love is for the young.
Yet, if I gave alleged journalists any credit, I might believe that Gen Z youth are not dating. Gen Z is not screwing. Gen Z is not doing anything fun this summer. As I have two too young Gen Z, I am ok with no Romance. My elder kid tried out love, and pretends she’s over a broken heart one year later (she’s not). She gave up on dating. I hope to God that she never gives up on love, though I’m proud she tried and failed.
When a kid zooms by on a motorized scooter this summer, it is always a helmetless Gen Zer. I see the young holding hands on walks in our park. It’s hard to kill the drive to love. My cynical child mocked a friend reading a popular romance book, and I would have once done the same, while reading poetry as if I were somehow better. Should the youth fail to love, the green of summer and the cicada sound out the beat of biological truth. No roses needed.
Covered in sweat, my daughter and I walked over a bridge covered in locks. Am I sheltered for not knowing of this old custom, where lovers etch their names and a date on the lock, and latch it to (preferably) chain link? We bent closer to read the names over the locks.
Far below us, water tumbled over falls, past a new and old mill on its way to the Mississippi. My daughter told me she thought the locks represented relationships, while my ignorance found me saying, “It’s probably an art installation.” We found out she was right, after I hobbled around carefully following to see what the young should see.
It’s a scene from Jane Austin—a decrepit mill with green growing through the cracks, watered by the constant mist from artificial and real falls. We sat in the spray, thinking of long relationships. “I found a lock down by the beach,” my daughter said. “They probably broke up.” Of course, on the drive home she looked up a love lock naysayer complaining of keys lining river bottoms. Still, romance and gothic ruins are not yet dead, I am happy to say.
Next month, I think I will go with my husband to affix our lock, though we bonded 24 years ago. No—I pray summer love—vined in green roses and bathwater heat lives on beyond those who refuse to see it. Moreover, I hope that those who dismiss such trinkets and trashy novels fall into a love deeper than the bottom of that river. The world would be a better place for it.
~Thanks for reading
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