Juxtaposing “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Where Did the Summer Go?” by Debra H. Goldstein

Juxtaposing “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Where Did the Summer Go?

You know how a song gets caught in your head? Two phrases are ringing in my ears, but I don’t know how or why my brain thinks they go together. Logically, they don’t. There just isn’t an intellectual way to reconcile “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Where did summer go?”

Why I thought of the latter question is easy to understand. We’ve passed the first official day of fall, the temperature has cooled, and leaves are changing colors and falling. If these things didn’t make the point to me, a few shopping trips did. One-minute stores were filled with patriotic July 4th merchandise, the next day they were offering Labor Day specials, and the Halloween stuff was already being pushed aside last week for Thanksgiving cards and turkey decorations. What’s worse, on the internet, besides Black Friday mentions, there already are Christmas countdowns.

“Days of Wine and Roses” doesn’t make as much sense to me. The play and the movie were about a young couple who became alcoholics and their fight for sobriety. Spoiler: one made it, one didn’t, but the open-ending left a slim chance for the future. If I was thinking of apples and honey, I would say my thoughts were influenced by Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement I observed a few weeks ago. Or if it was my anniversary, birthday, or a just because day, I could understand roses (Yellow roses are my favorite, in case you ever need to know). Wine isn’t something that excites or even interests me, so why is this phrase pulsating through my mind?

Maybe it is a combination of my dislike of the change to daylight savings as this is the part of the year where it will get dark sooner and my mood will follow. Perhaps it is because I know we are in the final quarter of the year which means end of the year responsibilities loom – closing committee reports, taxes, and the year itself aging because that means the same for me. Of course, it could be the holiday commercialism that will abound for the next three months.

Then again, it could be that the juxtaposition of these two phrases represent a kind of rebirth. The year ends, but begins anew. Within the confines of family and friends, the holidays represent fun, joy, getting together, and probably partaking of a bit of wine. Days and seasons (not to mention the time to writing deadlines) pass way to quickly, but there is a constant rekindling of hope. The movie was open-ended; our writing and lives are the same.
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