Summer Fling
Summer Fling: On Seasonal Nostalgia
By Megan Greig
August feels like a pool of sweat gathering on the back of my neck, collecting itself into a swollen drip, threatening to slide beneath the collar of my shirt, but somehow never gathering enough momentum to dampen the fabric. I wait and watch the calendar through the first weeks of this hottest month, feeling as though it will stay August 13th forever. Every day is more scorching, more suffocating than the day before. Every night is swarmed with more mosquitoes leaving angry, oozing bumps on every part of my body if I dare step outside in shorts.
I have been done with summertime for a while. My heart aches for a breeze that gives meaning to the phrase cold shoulder and the peppered smell of firewood smoke trailing out from the chimneys in my neighborhood. I am tired of stepping outside at 7 pm and reading that the temperature is higher outside than in my house. At the same time, I cannot bring myself to say that I’m looking forward to Autumn.
I was born in mid-July, the peak of summertime. It was the day before hurricane Bertha touched down on the east coast of the United States, and right in the middle of a face-off between the Orioles and the Yankees (my grandmother reminds me of this scheduling conflict every year). Even then, the temperature high of the day was in the mid-90s. Thus, my identity remains tied to hot, wet, bright summer days ever since that first one. Growing up in the southern portion of the mid-Atlantic, every childhood memory of a birthday party or a family vacation was under the blaze of hot sun and a blanket of humidity that made it feel like we spent most of our time swimming, even if there wasn’t a pool or ocean to be seen for miles.
My legs were as torn up back then as they are now, but not because of the burning, itching bug bites I haven’t figured out how to evade. Instead, there were bruises and cuts and scrapes from the rocks I slid over on our blue tarp-and-dish-soap slip-n-slide, and the times I fell running through the woods or the parking lot or the sidewalk or the backyard or the driveway or any other hot, jagged place a child could trip over her own two feet because her excitement for what was on the other end of that run was so all-consuming it defied bodily mechanics.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the way the summertime has injured me–she hurts me because she loves me. The way the skin on my face lit up bright red for days while my swollen nose healed from an unfortunate beach frisbee accident was a reflection of how hard her shining sun loved me. The opiatic relief from aloe vera and ice packs was proof of the benefits of that love. After that sunburn, I learned about moisturizer for the first time. I have not looked back.
As the weather begins to turn, the mosquito bites fade from my legs, and the overwhelming evening thunderstorms cancel my plans and turn me back into a child, nose pressed desperately to the window pane as the world falls to pieces on the outside. I lust after the long, unforgiving hours of sunlight that made it almost impossible to leave the house. The shorter days bring me back to my couch, or my bed, or that window pane, wishing to be trapped under the summer’s light again. I remember that the pain points I have cursed all season long are ghosts for whom I yearn throughout the rest of the year.
I can’t quite explain it, but this has been my attempt. Every minute of relief brought by Autumn’s relent is followed by one of mourning for what was, and what I will have to wait to be again. I feel the stinging burns of summertime the way some people talk about feeling the pains of childbirth; all is forgotten once it has ended, because all I can remember is the beauty.
