Summer Comes

In the backseat, center, of her father's silver convertible, Blair's head is leaned back against the red leather upholstery.  Her blue eyes are closed against the winds that have enveloped her.  Her chestnut hair is dancing around her head.  Tangling and untangling, the strands shimmer and flash.  The adolescent's penchant for gold has been caught in the shattered sunlight that arrives without fanfare through leaves and branches to land, oh so briefly, on our ingenue's face.  The shifts from shade to sun and back again, the patterns both in rhythm and representation that play on Blair's beguiling features, pulse on the screens of her lids.  The projections are hypnotizing, as is the rush and hush of passing cars, the buzz of the Lincoln's tires, the radio's broken rendition of World on a String straining to hold together from the front seat where Blair's parents are softly singing along with Sarah Vaughn.  It is 1972 and Summer has come.  Blair knows this because her father has unlocked the back garage and brought this behemoth back into the light, back onto the road, the river of cars...  And when she sits back like this, eyes closed, absorbing the sensations of this premier ride of the season, she can (or so it seems) remember every other year, every other summer coming, every other song on the easy listening channel that she has heard in intermittent waves of sun and wind.  The whole of this ritual is magical to Blair; it has the rare capability of combining a comfortable feeling of security with the exhilaration of being alive.