My neighbour taught me the rule in a single sentence, tossed over the fence one June morning in the tone of a man who has just won the lottery: “It's nice out — you've got to make the most of it!” It wasn't a remark about the weather, it was an alarm. Because here, summer isn't a season: it's a national emergency. Proof? At the first five degrees in April, the neighbour hauls out the barbecue and strolls around in shorts in the slush. Five degrees. The man froze all winter at minus thirty; now his body is convinced we've landed in Cancún.
And one day someone tells you “we're going to the beach”. You picture salt, waves, a horizon. You arrive at a lake. Saint-Gédéon. The water is eighteen degrees, which a Quebecer calls “warm”. Someone already in up to their neck, lips turning purple, shouts: “Get in, it's great!” Translation: “I'm hypothermic and I'd like company.” You get in. It is not great. But you'll lie to the next person too, because that's the real tradition. They call it a beach. Fair enough: after six months of winter, we're ready to call just about anything a beach.
But here, a beach is above all a gathering: the fry stand reopening, the smell of fries on the wind, kids covered in sand, three generations on the same blanket at the water's edge.
And all of it is planned far in advance. Day camps fill up in March, in the middle of a snowstorm. Then mid-July arrives — this year, from July 19 to August 1 — and Quebec doesn't slow down: it closes. A pipe bursts at your place on July 20? Congratulations, you own an indoor pool until August 4. Everywhere, emails answer on their own: “Away, back August 4, have a great summer!” The plumber, the boss, the mayor. Everyone has taken off — to the cottage, to the campground, or three hours away to swim in another lake, when there's a magnificent one at the end of their street. But that one, you see, is theirs.
And what summer really taught me comes down to one phrase: “come on over”. Come on over to the lake, come on over for supper, come on over for a swim. It isn't politeness, it's a door being opened.
My only mistake, that first year, was answering “some other time” out of shyness.
Some other time never comes if you never say yes.
