In childhood, summer meant long nights and tall corn fields, watching out for snakes, day trips to the beach and family vacations. When I was a teenager it meant, making summer reading lists hours lawn mowing, softball tournaments in faint worthy heat, part time jobs, getting a tan, and weekly beach sojourns. For the most of my life summers have been beaches, tans, and glass bottled Cokes. My sister, cousins, and I swim in the ocean and time the lyrics to "Part of Your World" to great big ocean swells so they could lift us up just as they do Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." So what if we did that even into adult hood? I regret nothing. I always remember summers as being relaxing. That weight of school and life was gone, melted away like nearly everything else in that southern sun.
Living abroad for the past three summers meant that I craved that kind of summer again. I needed that idle family time where we walked on the shore after a heavy supper. I needed to ride in cars with the windows down, singing until I was hoarse, and I needed to sit on the front porch swing while summer thunderstorms rolled through. But living abroad for so long also meant that things had changed. Summers weren't so idle anymore. We couldn't pack up and drive to the beach for a day carrying only a towel, a book, and a Coke. New additions to my family and my friend's families meant that we needed an hour to get ready for the beach and 6 kinds of SPF were required. (I'm not knocking this. I wear SPF everyday now because I'm terrified of wrinkles.) Disney lyrics were replaced with "no, don't eat the sand, yes that's a bird, I don't know why fish can't swim in the sky." Walks after supper were overrun by bath time, and bed time rituals. Trips to the bar or late night alcohol runs couldn't take place because there was a small person that needed us more.
The changes were overwhelming. I myself had changed, and, yet, so had everyone else. It was an adjustment summer, a get-reaquainted summer, an introduction into adulthood summer. And I think for any parent or single person, such as myself who has many friends with children, has this realization that summers can't be like the ones of our childhood anymore. That kind of realization can be hard to swallow sometimes, and it can be extremely difficult to adjust, but I didn't have time to bemoan my lost childlike summers. I only had a month with my family before I was gone again. So I helped pack (and use) 6 kinds of sunscreen. I stayed in on Saturday nights to help friends put their kids down, and then talk about husbands and children over glasses of wine. And soon enough I had a different kind of realization, summers will always be just what they ought to be. I ate cold watermelon, swung on the porch swing, rode shotgun in hot trucks beside boys with sea air and cigarette smoke wafting through open windows. I shopped at farmer's markets and laughed with friends over coffee and wine. I still made a summer reading list. I still worked on my tan. I had idle family time.
There will always be tall corn fields, glass bottled Coke, and salty sea air summers.
