Technically today is the last day of Spring. Summer arrives with the solstice tomorrow. I don’t know if it is a product of age, or of living in a place that has its share of cold and wet weather in the spring, but I find myself looking forward to some warmer days. Last Sunday the woman presenting the time with children in our worship service did a good job of getting the children and the rest of us to think about some false dichotomies. That is a difficult concept for people of all ages. She polled us about our preferences: Chocolate or Vanilla? Dogs or Cats? Already I was having trouble deciding which way to “vote.” I like chocolate and I like vanilla. I like dogs and I like cats. When she got to “summer or winter” I began to think, “This is unfair. What about people who prefer spring or fall? What if you like both summer and winter equally?” The choice that stymied the children, and most of the rest of the congregation for that matter was “Brussels sprouts or okra?” Most of the kids in our Pacific Northwest location didn’t know what okra was and many of them didn’t know what Brussels sprouts are either. Even when the presenter described them, they sounded similar and unappealing.

Then she asked, “hitting or not hitting?” The children all went for not hitting. And she said, “It depends, doesn’t it? In baseball, hitting is a good thing.”

That, of course, was the point of the entire presentation. Things aren’t always as simple as they appear. It was one of those Sundays, and there are a lot of them, when the time with children made a more lasting impression than the sermon. the sermon was rambling and unfocused and, in my opinion, never got to the point.

All of which is to say that although I am looking forward to summer this year. I’m hoping for a few days of sunshine. Even though I’m still healing up from a round of treatment for pre-cancers on my hands and face and I have to be slathered in sun screen and under a floppy hat or a sun hood, I’m ready for some sunny days. The tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers and dahlias in my garden agree. They are all showing signs of needing just a bit more sun.

Summer begins with a joyous celebration for me. Saturday will be our 51st wedding anniversary. When we were married one of my friends ribbed me about choosing the shortest night of the year for our wedding and I responded by saying, “When we are married every night will be too short.” Little did I know at the time that all it takes for every night to be too short is to have an infant in the household. A couple of kids seemed to add up to a couple of decades of feeling short of sleep regardless of the season of the year.

In celebration of the coming of summer, it seems appropriate to expand my vocabulary a bit since there is a bit of a heliophile in everyone. A heliophile is one attracted or adapted to sunlight. Even though the spell checker in my word processor doesn’t know it, the word is in the dictionary. In marine biology heliophile is used to describe aquatic alga specifically adapted to attain maximum exposure to sunlight. I guess that contemporary understanding of the dangers of skin cancer might discourage people from being heliophiles, perhaps we might apricate a bit. Technically apricate simply means to expose to sunlight, but it can be used to describe basking in the warmth of the sun’s rays. The word, however doesn’t appear in Webster’s Dictionary. I had to go to the Oxford English Edition to check the spelling as it is another that my word processor doesn’t know. While in the OED, I discovered another form of the word, apricity, which refers to the joy of the sun on a winter’s day. That seems like a really good word to have in my vocabulary as it is a sensation that I have often appreciated and the phrase “appreciate apricity” rolls off the tongue in a most pleasant manner.

Wandering around the Oxford English Dictionary, of course, gives me an opportunity to find some other words that aren’t normally in my vocabulary and that confound my computer’s spell checker. I like new words for both of those reasons. While I may not technically be a heliophile, I approach the word with philocaly, which is the love of beauty. It is how I feel about the dahlia blossoms and the seashore and the mountains and the people in my life. Philocaly rescues me from mubble fubbles or a state of depression or melancholy, despondency and low spirits. That is a new term for me. I don’t think I’ve ever before used it. That may be because I am not prone to mubble fubbles. It is, however, a good term to apply to those days when everything seems to be going wrong. I guess I can just say that I got up on the wrong side of the bed, but that is nearly impossible. I don’t sleep alone and haven’t done so for 51 years. It is simply easier to get up on the “right” side of the bed and really awkward to get up on the “wrong” side of the bed. I don’t know if we could sleep if we switched sides. We’ve simply never done so and I see no reason to begin now.

The dictionary, however, doesn’t lead you to all of the fun words for summer or any other season. Scandinavians know how to grueglede or “dread something happily.” They are not locked into binary choices, I guess. Brits spend time gongoozling: “staring idly and protractedly at something.” I suppose that you might do that if you are experiencing kalopsia when things look more beautiful than they are.

As spring concludes and summer begins, I am feeling philocaly: taking pleasure in the small joys of life. Typing silly words is just the beginning. May your summer be filled with joy.