I’m not saying that every day in summer is a walk in the park, or swimming pool, but you must admit, there is something about more sunshine that puts a whole ‘nother slant on our routines. Everything seems a bit more relaxed when running around barefoot. Most of the time, as a part of fancy freeness, we here at the Blunders eat off paper plates in the summer, plates filled with cantaloupe and blackberries that taste better than candy. I also wear fewer clothes, which is to say I have just two-shirts that come in and out of the rotation. As a result, it is normal for my wife to walk through the kitchen in the morning for her coffee and ask me whether I’m going to change my t-shirt today. That is my cue to put the second one back into the rotation and wash the one that smells like a combination of swimming pool chlorine and various drinks I’ve spilt on it over the course of a week. In any case, whether I change the shirt or not, just the asking of the question has the sound of summer laziness and self-content.
With all that relaxed atmosphere floating through early June, I had some hesitation about pushing through a tax deadline, but in the interest of not being put in jail by the IRS with a dirty T-shirt, I got up and filled out the necessary forms, got the checks ready with the appropriate vouchers, and headed out to the post office. I felt a certain amount of satisfaction, an aplomb d’etre you might say, that, with a clean T-shirt on, I had already met my top objective goal for the day, which is to say, I had accomplished almost nothing.
To heighten the experience to the post office, I rolled down all my windows in my car and retracted my sunroof to create the experience of driving with every possible opening available. I had, in essence, prepared my car to be a convertible, which it is not. With the entire interior of my car exposed to the world, I could not only soak up all that a summer morning has to offer but also get a whiff of that fabric sheet I threw in the dryer that makes my fresh T-shirt smell like a bouquet of flowers. Before this trip, I believe my T had been dried with a dryer sheet labelled “Aspen in the Springtime.” I’ve never been to Aspen, so I thought this is going to be an added bonus on my way to the post office, kind of a gift from Colorado.
This is going to be great, I thought. It’s early, slightly cool, my taxes are ready to go, resting comfortably on my passenger seat in their envelopes, and I am going to take a little joy ride to the post office and let all my senses be smothered on this beautiful, simple morning of summer, that season where there is endless daylight, people wear baseball caps, and little kids have purplefaces because they’ve eaten nothing but grape popsicles all day long.
Backing out of my driveway, I waved at one of my neighbors, a lady who walks with an enormous sombrero-type sun hat to keep the sun off her face and her complexion as smooth as glass. She would stand out like a sore thumb in any other season, but right now, it’s open season for these kind of wardrobe decisions. Along the curve on our long street, the wind is moving sideways through my fake convertible picking up the fragrance of newly dampening mulch from a sprinkler. Just the day before, the same lady in the wide hat told me she had planted some chocolate geraniums around her dogwood, so even though her mulch smells like manure, I pretend I am smelling chocolate. That is what happens on a beautiful summer morning – even manure can be enjoyable.
Moving along in my convertible, completely exposed to the elements, I’m mentally reliving a book I had to read in college called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanience, a book about a father and son who took to the open road, a cross-country trip on a motorcycle. They didn’t, as I remember, have their income taxes with them like I do, but never mind that – its summer, where freedom reigns and my wife hugs me whether I’m wearing a new T-shirt or the other one, the slightly ripe one that is standing up on its own back home in the corner.
Since all of my senses are on vacation this fine morning, I was completely oblivious to the neighbor lady who I noticed made a mad stab to save her huge hat just as a microburst flipped it sideways on her head. Oblivious, I pulled out onto the main thoroughfare, and that same tornado blast, like a vortex from the first hurricane of the season, whipped across the openness of my convertible. I thought for a moment that I had been hit by one of those huge industrial fans they have blasting at Costco’s when it is 115 degrees outside. The impact of the wind was that gale forces penetrated my front seat, picking up all of my neatly organized tax envelopes, and sent them and all their contents straight upward and swirling around my face. Everything that wasn’t nailed down in my car, in fact, entered the anti-gravitational chamber, including checks, vouchers, social security numbers, and every personal detail about my life. It was like watching the tornado scene from the Wizard of Oz, except that I was watching from the inside this time, and the flying papers were making paper cuts across my cheeks and eyes, spinning in a funnel cloud, and then flying out of my convertible.
Faster than you can say Form 1040, I saw summer disappear. Any leisurely thoughts I had entertained before had to be re-focused on keeping myself from driving headlong into a passing bus as tax documents beat the living tar out of my face. Through a miracle not seen since the invention of the Gutenberg press, I was able to pull off the road, and begin what turned out to be an hour search for my missing papers. I did find all of them with the help of a neighbor who, like an angel, came out to help me search in the surrounding neighborhoods, walking through people’s yards and dodging traffic. Given her time and effort, it is unfortunate that during our search I kept calling her Miranda instead of Melinda, a fact that is sad considering the sacrifice she made. Yet in spite of my memory fog, Melinda found the last missing piece, and then in a voice not unlike the one my mother used to use when I became discouraged, gently said, “Jeff, you can do it. Go my son, drive, take a risk, get back in your car, become the change you want to see in your convertible, go, deliver those taxes, go…”
I noticed the other day, that by the miracle of tracking registered mail, my envelopes had reached their destination. I want to believe that an IRS lady who had worked for the government for 47 years and was near retirement, opened my envelopes and put them in a pile to be collated along with millions of other tax records. The contents would have appeared unusually wrinkled to her, but it didn’t matter. It was summertime, and she had put the top down on her car on her way to work that morning and had taken the liberty to wear her wide-brimmed garden hat, as well as a light summer dress and a touch of perfume that had notes of chocolate geraniums.