What Summer Means To Me

What Summer Means to Me

When I close my eyes and think about summer, I don’t think about beaches or vacations. I think about wet earth after the garden hose quenched the thirst of old peach trees, the smell of wet tomato vines, the faint smell of chocolate mixed with sweat on my grandpa’s faded olive green T-shirt, the first tiny droplets of condensation from our old swamp cooler hitting my face after the long walk home from the bus stop, a Popsicle, fireflies dancing in an Oklahoma field and catching them in a Mason jar for the very first time, wishing we had them in California. I think about tiny flowers floating in little cups of water and mud pies decorated with blossoms and sprinkled with what I called “light brown sugar.” That was summer to me.

Looking back, I think that’s also where I learned to pay attention.

I come from a long line of farmers. My family’s roots are in Oklahoma and Kansas before eventually making their way to California, where hard work was simply a way of life. My grandpa worked at the Hershey’s chocolate factory in Oakdale, California, for thirty-six years. When he wasn’t working, he mowed lawns, and we always had a huge garden with fat “tomata” plants and even fatter “tomata” worms. There were grapes growing on the vine, muskrats swimming through the canal, and enormous bull snakes that would slither across the road or disappear into the water. To me, it wasn’t scary. It was just summer.

As a little girl, I didn’t know why I noticed things the way I did. I was the odd duck in my family. While everyone else was studying Spanish, I insisted on learning French. I saved all of my babysitting money to buy a $75 cookbook called France: The Beautiful Cookbook.

My grandparents couldn’t understand it. Honestly… I couldn’t understand me.

I’d pick up silverware in other people’s homes and weigh it in my fingertips, somehow knowing if it was quality or not. No one taught me that. I just knew. Craftsmanship mattered to me. Beauty mattered to me. Atmosphere mattered to me. I just didn’t have words for it yet.

Now, looking back, I wonder if I’d been carrying an imagined French château inside me all along. I think that was the beginning of my nose. The beginning of paying attention to the world around me and wanting to be in a place where those things mattered.

And when I close my eyes and try to tell you what summer means to me, this is it. It’s drinking from a garden hose, muddy feet, running through a sprinkler, eating hot grapes straight off the vine, smelling fruit already beginning to rot on the ground, itchy tomato plants brushing against my legs, mosquito bites, towering corn stalks offering a little reprieve from the blistering afternoon sun, crickets singing after dark, and a big ol’ full, pink moon hanging low on the horizon at dusk.

Summer wasn’t just hot. Summer was waiting all day for that magical moment when the blistering Central Valley sun finally set, the garden got its long drink of water, and everyone could breathe again.

That’s what summer means to me.

~ Amy

I’d love to know what summer means to you.