growing up, summer meant no school.
i remember putting whipped cream on my desk in the second grade to celebrate that summer was (finally!) here. every year at the beginning of school summer would seem like such a distant reality, but somehow june always came back.
summer meant going to the neighbor's house with no shoes, the rough cement under your tanned feet, picking plums and peaches and apricots off of neighbors' trees and mom making a hundred batches of apricot spread because of the neighbors' bounty.
my sisters and i would wake up in the morning and watch
the brady bunch and
get smart. we'd pile on to mom and dad's bed and watch on their little white TV the beloved TV land station and then begin our day. maxwell smart was the perfect breakfast buddy.
we'd go to soccer camp and eat popsicles for snack break and at the end of the week we always got a blender's (split between two people of course). when we were little, we would take swimming lessons and then we got old enough to finally go on the high dive and learn how to do sumersaults under water. we'd spend so much time in the water that our feet got pruny and our eyes a little blood shot from the chlorine.
dad came home around six thirty.
sometimes we were already outside, but i remember the excitement (i still feel it) of seeing his car pull in the driveway. he usually sits there for a few minutes -- finishing a phone conversation or listening to whatever the NPR newscaster is saying. and then he would get out and get his briefcase from the trunk and give us a big hug and come in for dinner.
dinner -- sometimes on the patio, when it got too hot and we wanted to be outside.
watermelon and corn on the cob. so much corn in the summer. my favorite.
summer reminds me of bathing suits. i've come to despise bathing suit shopping, but when i was younger, i knew the drill well: 2 bathing suits for the summer. usually one of those two was a one-piece and the other a two piece. one was specifically for the ocean and was okay for tar. after a day at the beach, mom would sometimes have to get a whole bottle of oil or goo-gone to rub the tar off the bottoms of our feet. the boogie boards would lay out in the grass and we'd spray off the sand and fight with each other for who called the shower first.
the ocean wasn't usually too cold for me. i like to think of myself as a sort of "otter" during elementary school because i had an extra layer of cushion/padding/extra pounds that worked to keep me fairly warm. my skinnier friends would shiver in the ocean and i would say "it's not so bad!" we would boogie board and eventually try surfing. i remember the taste of getting salty water up my nose and the pressure of a wave as you dunk your head under the water.
sprinklers. slip n' slides.
we did those well. we would giggle loud and mom would strategically move the sprinklers or the swimming pool to the different parts of the lawn. one side was always greener than the other.
bass lake. the sisters and i slept in two queen size beds and had a rotation for who slept where. libby was always covered in mosquito bites in the morning and kelsey usually took the longest to fall asleep and would make me laugh before bed. i'd get up in the morning and see mom, reading her Bible on the swiniging chair with her coffee and dad, with water or iced tea, reading his Bible or cutting a grapefruit. i always look forward to their hugs in the morning and cuddling up next to them like a little kid as i'm still trying to wake up.
i hope i'm never too old for that.
we'd go grocery shopping for the vacation week and stop at the candy aisle and put all these random pieces of candy into plastic bags and the flavors would sort of clash and not taste good anymore. but it didn't matter because we were staring at 200 flavors of candy and we could choose whatever we wanted. dad would put zingers in the cart, mom would roll her eyes. we'd pick out a berry cobbler and i would suggest rice pudding. and then kelsey would eat it secretly and say that since no one was eating it, she had every right to. i would yell and we would bicker. but the bickering always stops because she makes me laugh so hard i can't keep a straight face long enough to really fight.
my favorite part about those summer vacations was the late afternoon after a long hike or a day on the dock. we'd be showered - and a little sunburned and tired looking, but we'd look simple and clean and sun kissed and eat our dinner outside and drink juice squeeze and listen to the crickets and smell the pine trees. then we'd play card games or read a book or watch a movie.
we would go hiking. i would always dread it, but once we were on the trail it was an adventure. we would swat mosquitos and layer on sunscreen and request frequent snack breaks of trail mix and granola bars. and for lunch, if we were lucky, we would reach a pool of water and dare each other to go swim in it. we would leave the maps for mom and dad to figure out and provide constant entertainment along the hike - usually making fun of each other and laughing loud enough to scare off the other hikers.
in the summer i could always tell when kelsey was tired. her eyes would get a little pink and the skin right under her eyes would get slightly burned. she would insist that she wasn't tired, but i knew she wanted to close her eyes so bad. libby's hair turns a bit more red with the summer sun...sometimes i would call her my little "marigold".
on summer days, we would sit out by the pool. dad would immediately ask for the sunscreen once we would find our place to set up camp. i always hated when he would try to put sunscreen on my ears...i insisted i wouldn't get burned there but i was proved wrong. mom and kelsey would acquire beautiful tans and dad would get random pink spots on his toes or on his head and libby's freckles would get even cuter. i would monitor my sun intake by alternating between laying out and sitting in the shade (with periodic swimming breaks to cool off).
every summer morning was with mom. we'd annoy her and watch her get ready in the morning -- she'd be curling her hair with the TV on and we'd be laying in her bed. then she'd have her breakfast -- usually a yogurt and banana. she'd tell us to get ready and we would do so, very reluctantly leaving her heavenly bed.
i've never spent a summer away from home before...so living here in massachusetts during the months of june, july, and august feels weird and lonely at times. but i'm grateful for the experience and the adventure -- but more grateful for the memories and stories of all the summers i've shared before with the most wonderful sisters and parents in the world.
