It’s been an odd summer. I was informed that significant planetary activity – retrogrades, eclipses, blood moons – is contributing to “the time is out of joint feeling.” Shakespearean, isn’t it?

Weather-wise summer never quite hit the target. I was out by the water days before the 4th of July and needed a fleece hoodie. Then we crashed into scorching heat advisory weather and thunderstorms…it certainly curtailed outdoor time. The flowers suffered, most weren’t all what they should have been, others couldn’t cope at all. Now the summer is winding down, not entirely, we often have a long Indian summer, but the flurried fever of back-to-school is in the air.

I was talking to a friend who has three boys, and I was marveling at  how she manages to organize and track their myriad activities. I think she would need a board bigger than what Eisenhower used for D-Day. She was ruminating over the brevity of childhood now, and remarked, “Remember when you would just lay in the grass for hours and look at the clouds and feel the earth moving beneath you…?” As she said this I saw the image (above) from the movie Boyhood – then other images flashed of my childhood experience: looking for four-leaf clovers, catching fireflies, exploring woods and fields, finding old horseshoes, arrowheads, swimming in the local swimming hole which had a huge old tree with a knotted rope to jump off from.

In my email inbox was an affirmation: “Today, I reflect on positive memories with genuine gratitude.” I regarded this as a sign to pen this post. While I was down by the sea I saw a childhood ritual in keeping with the eternity of things. There’s a small bridge that connects the island to the village and it spans a saltwater bay. High tide brings kids for the joy of bridge jumping. No equipment needed – just a swimsuit and some nerve. On my way home I saw two girls selling lemonade. I was transported back to doing that myself with my best friend on a quiet country road. The first foray into “commerce.” Our dads and friends would stop and buy a glass from us.

My mother used to read us a poem, “Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity.” It beautifully captures that heavenly time of summer in childhood. I hadn’t thought about that poem for ages, I found it online and untarnished. Worth a read.

This afternoon, I returned to the lovely coastal setting because the weather gods relented and gave us some fine summer days. There was a girl blowing bubbles that traveled far in the sea breeze, and the kids were again at the bridge – fathers, sons, and daughters.

More memories came flooding back. Once the gate is open it is hard to close. I remember a boy I knew from summers out at my parent’s place. I have two lovely memories of him. We were leaving for Europe – gone for most of the summer  – and he had stopped my sister who was walking ahead of me. He was straddling his bike and I could only see his profile, but he was smiling and wishing us a good journey. Some years later, I ran into him at a train station – again in summer. He was all dewy and moist from rushing to catch the train. He had that high color and glow that only sweet youth doth make, and he was wearing a seersucker jacket. I found that charming. We started a friendship, a small romance, which was simply sweet. No tears, no recriminations, just ripe and happy that only the young can manage. I saw him once again five years later; he was the same pleasant intelligent person, and had newly become an attorney. I could still see the young flushed boy in him, yet something a little darker had claimed his spirit.

At the end of my reverie I stopped at the village shop where they make their own ice cream. While I was eating my Moose Tracks cone, I thought about all and more of summers past, and as happy as they are, for a moment, I break a little inside.

Let’s seize the day and enjoy the salty and sweet pleasures of summer – shut out the noise, listen to the cicadas, keep it simple, enjoy the ice cream. Sweet summer is there to grasp – the gossamer silk of now and then. As our older and younger selves, we look together up at the clouds and imagine.

Clare Irwin

N.B. The poem “Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle…” was written by John Tobias and is in an anthology of poems of the same title edited by Stephen Dunning et al.