The Girls of Indian Summer

There is a song by Stephen Sondheim called The Girls of Summer. It begins:

The girls of summer get burned; they start the summer unconcerned...They get undone by a touch of sun in June, plus a touch of the moon.

Last weekend I got together with a group of women that I have known since St Joe's college days, when we were all girls of summer. One member of the group, Denise, I have known since freshman orientation in the summer of 1973, when I was 17. Jenny, Anita, Rose and Maureen I met during the fall of that year. Mary and DJ I met later, but certainly by the summer of 1977.

The girls of summer get fooled...but soon the summer heat has cooled. And come September they can't remember why things were hot in July..

Back then we were vessels filled full of life and all of its potentialities. Plus beer. And chips.

We spent our summer weekends at the Jersey shore. We hit the beach in the afternoon, heedless of the UV rays, slathering ourselves with what passed for suntan lotion in those days. Our most important daily decision was where we would go that night to meet guys and to watch and comment snarkily when other, less fabulous girls met guys we wouldn't be caught dead with.

Sometimes we played pinochle. At least one of us reneged quite frequently.

Sometimes we woke up in the morning and couldn't remember why things were hot the night before. Or, anything else about the night before, other than a blur of loud music and laughter and intrigue in smoky, darkly lit rooms with sticky floors that smelled of hops.

Not me, it's too easy to fall ...The moonlit sand, a faraway band, and that's all...not me, I don't easily thrill...never did, never will

The song's narrator is too smart, too rational, to be beguiled by the sultry magic of youth, and the folly of an open heart. Clearly not a girl of summer.

The end of summer's at hand, I thought the summer was grand, and here I am with the same undamaged heart that I had at the start...

Those summers were packed as full as we could make them, with work, and play, and friendship that's lasted a lifetime. Sometimes we chose unwisely, and then there were tears and recrimination. Sometimes we chose well, and our lives were forever changed.

The girls of summer forgot to run...the girls of summer were bound to lose..the girls of summer had all the fun...

Now we are the girls of Indian summer. Our lives have known joy, and heartache, and complications we couldn't have imagined in those halcyon days.

We are still together. Our hearts may be damaged, but they are still open. We still have all the fun.