Summer...

Do you remember how summer was when you were young and you had  2 months to spend doing exactly what you wanted each and every day once school ended?

On a rainy summer day you might have decided to spend it in your room reading, happily immersed in that new book you got yesterday when you went out with your family to shop or do laundry. You'd barely venture out of your room except when it was time to eat lunch or dinner, and after your chores were done you'd scurry back to your room to get back to your book. When you finished it you felt somewhat bereft, saddened to bid these new friends good bye for the moment. For me my books of choice were the Nancy Drew mysteries and I would spent hours upon hours relishing in the latest story to be told. I loved those rainy days, when it was just slightly cooler and you could just be. There was no rush.

On some days you might have slept late or maybe you got up early when you heard the melodious call of the Bob White just outside your window, the sky perfectly blue and the sun beaming and beckoning you to come out to play. I spent hours watching  ants and other insects go about their daily business, or ran through the cornfields that were right across the street from our house with one of the neighborhood kids. To this day I can still hear the Bob White's call, and it is a memory that brings me comfort, joy, and my childhood...my summers.

Or maybe your parents decided that tomorrow was the day to go for that 20 minute drive to the beach. Mom would pack lunches for everyone in the cooler; some fruit, like peaches, plums or nectarines, some Tasty Cake all chocolate cup cakes - the ones you fought your brother over and would attempt to squirrel away, water, soda. Dad packed up the car with the umbrella, towels and a big sheet for everyone to pile on after they got out of the water. There was the Coppertone Sun lotion, and the Seabreeze, and anything else you might need. You and your siblings packed your toys- the requisite shovels and sifters and you'd be ready to go, anxious to go..dying to get moving. Come on dad, let's go! And we did.

The first thing you did- after you helped bring things from the car and place them on the sand - was to kick off your sneakers or flip flops and run like a wild banshee to the edge of the water. You'd run several feet into the ocean, take a flying leap and dive just under the wave just cresting before you. You loved that feeling of the water's force just slightly touching your back, its bubbles tingling your skin. If you were brave enough you went just far enough to learn how to body surf, and when you mastered that task you'd do it over and over again until your fingertips turned blue and wrinkled like a prune. You didn't worry about the sun then, and invariably you'd get burned, a color that turned a rich golden hue after the red faded and the peeling stopped. Later, as a teenager, you grew even braver and would take a raft out further into the ocean, where the waves appeared higher and your feet really couldn't touch the sand anymore. You knew just where to swim to and you would sit astride the raft and wait for the wave to come fast and quickly. How many times did you rush in like that, steering the raft so you wouldn't knock anyone down, yelling to others to "get out of the way, please!" You were thrilled by your own wildness and your sense of adventure, even if sometimes you were knocked off the raft by an especially violent wave. You didn't care then. It was so much fun. So free.

Perhaps, after the big family bbq, you and your cousins would hang out outside and catch fireflies in a bottle. You'd watch their bodies flicker and dim repeatedly, not knowing that this was really a mating call. To this day I can recall their odd, pungent smell and when I see them now the child in me reaches for them, and then lets them go. Inside, your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were happily sipping an aperitif, or coffee, or expresso in Mom's fine demitasse cups, while your older brother and older cousins were upstairs listening to music, and being very cool.

I miss those days.

In summer, just after Dad's teaching year ended my parents would take us out of school a few days before it ended so we could drive to the Southern New Jersey shore. My father's parents, brothers and their families lived there, so it was only natural that we would go there as well. They were my happiest of days.

About a week before we went Mom and Dad spent days packing up the house in NYC for our two month long sojourn. Arrangements had to be made to turn off the phone, forward the mail and un plug all of the appliances, except the refrigerator. A thorough sweep of the house would be made to make sure the windows were all locked and closed, and the large green Venetian blinds were drawn and lowered. We packed our things when we were old enough to do so - books, drawing supplies, clothes, bathing suits - and then on the day we left, Dad, Mom, my brother, our Golden Retriever mutt Sandy, and my hamster would be packed into the car for the very long drive. Invariably, Sandy the dog spent the entire 2 1/2 hour ride drooling and puking in the back of our station wagon.  This did not make me happy.

We had an old ratty country house there, but it had so much charm, the kind you can't really find today in newer homes. It was a small Victorian, and needed a lot of work to restore it. It had termites, although they never did anything about it. How it still stood remained a mystery to me as I got older. It needed a paint job and a bathroom, so one year when I was about 12, a new bathroom was put in (before that they used an outhouse and we showered outside behind a curtain) and we painted the inside of the house. The outside was too much for dad and my older brother to do.

They bought it in the late 40's or maybe the early 50's  and it was filled with treasures you can't find today or have to pay a lot of money for - old books and china, sculptures and collectibles, lace garments and towels, old marbletopped furniture. These things are difficult to find today, but then they were everywhere. The house always had a musty smell when we first opened it. Mom and dad would open all the windows to air it out, and then would spend an hour or so dusting the cobwebs and spiders from the walls after we unpacked the car. Dad or my brother would have to get the pump going so that we had running water, and Mom would turn all the faucets on so that the pipes could clear out. In the next day she would have to make sure the phone would be turned back on. Every year they changed the number, something that always amused me.

The first real day was spent cleaning, and then we'd all pile into the car to go food shopping. This was always a treat for me. As a preteen and teenager I loved reading Archie comic books, along with my Nancy Drew mysteries, so I was allowed to get a few on these trips. The phone hook up was arranged, and then we would go off to visit my grandparents or my aunts and uncles for dinner at someone's house. This was always exciting and fun, seeing them again. We had so many laughs.

Summers now give way to real life. Working every day. Commuting in car whose AC is not quite working up to par. Hot and humid days. Work rules for vacation and how long you can be out and making sure there is "coverage".  Even though I work at a college I can't take the whole summer off. Administrators can't do that, and I am one of them, something I resent actually. I miss the freedom of youth, its ease and its flow. Vacations for me are short and the instant I am relaxed I have to return to work again. But this weekend I changed that and I did something I never do. I read a book.

Usually, I am immersed in the business of chores to do every weekend, even those in summer and those on vacation. I was tired this week, and aggravated by the heat and humidity here, along with the news about my knees, so I put off my chores until tomorrow (I took the day off to get my MRI for my knee) and all I did was read.

I was reading Sue Miller's "The World Below"; I highly recommend it --a great read - and it was the first time in my life when I actually tasted summer's ease again...where I relaxed and did nothing but read in bed, or on our couch in the early morning daylight, while the birds were singing their songs.

and tonight, while I write this, I feel free..like the young girl and woman I still am inside.