Summer Daze

by Gwen Cooper — June 22, 2007

Having spent the last few blogs dwelling on relationship negatives (i.e. the decidedly unromantic ways many of them end), it seems appropriate now to return to the decidedly more optimistic realm of new love--especially today, on the brink of what promises to be a gorgeous summer weekend here in New York.

People may have differing philosophies, but mine has always been that summer romances are the best. I was with a friend yesterday, flipping through old photo albums and scrapbooks from our sleepaway camp years. I remember so clearly how it used to feel as if summers were endless when I was a kid, it often seemed as if my entire life could change in the course of a single week. Whenever I hear songs like Chicago's "Hard For Me to Say I'm Sorry" or Don Henley's "Boys of Summer," I have vivid recollections of summer-camp socials and sneaking off to "get to second" with the unbearably cute boy from the boys' camp across the lake. Even into my later teen and college years, there was always something about a summer romance that seemed different--and more intense--than the typical school-year relationship.

Being (sadly) a grown-up these days, summers aren't distinguished from the rest of the year quite as sharply as they used to be. Unlike school, work doesn't stop June through August. But the days are still long and lazy--and the weekends even longer and lazier--and it's with no small sense of excitement that I look forward to spending this summer with Robert. We've already fallen into the habit of spending weekends next to his parents' pool in New Jersey (which we affectionately refer to as "our Hamptons"), and have planned a few mini vacations upstate and down in the Florida Keys. Robert's never been to the Keys and, given his very mixed feelings about my cats and pets in general, I'm curious to see how he'll react to swimming with dolphins--the unquestionable highlight, along with conch fritters at a beachside bar, to any Key Largo trip.

Mostly, though, I'm looking forward to having a summer romance with Robert right here in the City--to wearing short shorts and short dresses, sitting in blissfully cool movie theaters in the evening after having walked around all day, and drinking cheap sangria on my balcony and then making out like teenagers on humid summer nights. And I look forward to you guys writing in with some of your summer romance stories as well.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.