When I was a child in the hills of western Massachusetts, I was convinced I loved summer more than any other kid in town. Summer meant watergun fights and late-night soccer matches in the meadow across Granville Road, chasing fireflies through leafy woods in the massive nature sprawl of Stanley Park, and the weekend block parties our neighborhood would throw on a few occasions each season, the thick tang of charcoal grilling and pool chlorine hanging almost solidly in the air. Despite the mosquito bites and the constant shadow realization of school letting in again soon, summer was a clear glass jar of freedom in a shapeless year.
As I grew, I began to love summer less and less, a boy becoming a man and aging out of feverish childhood passions. Once we moved to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, summer meant endless traffic trapped in sun-sticky, brutally hot cars. It meant the occasional blithe rudeness of the tourists at whatever hellish retail outlet you spent the summer toiling for. I was never a beach kid; a part of me always yearned desperately for those cool Massachusetts summers again, likely more idyllic in my memory than they were in reality. Adulthood tends to mean a great deal of revisionist history where our younger days are concerned. Still, a halcyon glow surrounds the very thought of those summers even now as I approach thirty.
Now my cherished time of the year is fall and winter. Maybe I've just change fundamentally as a person, but as they say, you can always bundle up but you can't take your skin off to escape the heat. Winter and autumn are times to wander the orange, freshly-bare woods at Shallow Ford, to navigate endless fields of dead yellow grass beneath boundless, overcast gray skies, to wrap yourself in a sweater and drink hot chocolate while you string holiday lights on the front porch, your breath fogging in the raw chill as the freights wail through the center of town. I'm not a dark person by nature (despite the themes of much of my art), but I love the mysterious pull the colder months have. Summer is a stagnant fog of haze in comparison, and moving through its syrupy warmth simply feels exhausting.
Perhaps I'm lucky. I've experienced passionate love for most of the year, but at different perspectives and levels of maturity throughout my life. For now though, I'm very much counting the days until it's time to carve pumpkins and build bonfires and burrow under covers once more. I'm aching for that first hint of frost in the air sometime in late August, that subtle shift of light to a more prosaic yellow that will tell me that my time is on its way to my door again. I'll try to enjoy summer in the meanwhile.
"And then it is raining 'cause Halloween is coming,
so close you can smell it right against your face."
-Thanksgiving, "There's No Invisible Halloween Costume That Isn't There"
Well, I disliked summer as a kid because it was hot and humid, but moreso because summer meant away from the regular schedule of life. When I was really little, it was nice because we went on trips to the lake and stuff, but when I was older, I spent much of the summer in cheap camps. When I was older than that, old enough to stay home without going to day camps and stuff, I spent much of the summer home until I started getting baby-sitting jobs. I didn't drive until I'd been in college for two years, neither did many of my friends, and not much is walkable from the house where I grew up (we walked to the downtown library, I walked to some baby-sitting jobs from there, occasionally to a gas station/corner store about 4 blocks away). I wasn't very social as a child but longed to be more; at least during the school year, I could pretend/try to be friends with some people who were polite enough to be cordial to me but with whom I didn't meet outside of school. I read a lot in the summer, drew a lot, wrote... stuff like that...
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm a nanny... summer is hard because kids are out of school, so something needs to be planned all the time, but it's nice to be able to go to museums and stuff with them. It's still spring-like right now, but it's generally as hot or hotten than when I was a kid, but I am more likely to be able to go to a pool.
I love spring because everything is just bursting into life and waking up. I like fall because it's nice and cool, and lots of things (pumpkins) are ripening. I love when things ripen, summer or fall (FYI: there are pecans, not ripe but green, on the pecan tree outside the spare bedroom window). I love special things that you can't do all the time: swimming in lakes, sitting by a fire, watching the leaves change, sledding, making lots of cookies and warming up the house.
Summer also signifies end-times... it's always the end of school, often the last time you see some people for a while, maybe ever. Summer is a very lonely time.
Well, at least there's blackberries and lakes...
This was so beautiful to read, seeing our younger life through your eyes. But like you Zach, the more desolate months draw me in, wrapping me rich, warmth and vivid dreams. Love this blog!
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