Summer People

then

I spend the entire year waiting for summer. Not the whole of it, but its return. The moments just before it actually begins

on a calendar, when you’re already calling it summer, when people are already on patios and at markets and kids are out of

school. I wait for the edge between the pleasantly warm days of late spring and the heat of July, when there is nothing but

a seemingly endless stretch of days ahead of you.

I used to be waiting for a trip: a group of people, an A-frame cottage with creaky floors and the rush of salt air through

open windows. But even with that all gone, I still find myself waiting for that moment. Some shift in the air that starts

in April and lasts through the solstice in June that signifies something turning over, starting fresh. Not fully realized

yet, but getting there, waking up.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to be someone who vowed that I’d never live for weekends, vacations, summers. But the habit

rooted in me ten years ago. Checking off days on a calendar, marking moments by how much closer they were to summer coming

back.

And it all started at a party I wasn’t even supposed to go to.