Welcome, Summer!
The mantra began in my brain last week. Or perhaps it was an obsessive loop. Please come, Summer! It began to morph into a prayer.
Context: Summer Solstice 2025. Once again cool, rainy weather had outstayed its welcome, at least in my mind. While our daily temperature in Oregon held steady in the 50’s and 60’s, a heat dome blanketed most of the rest of the continent.
I had thought about the national heat wave as a concept and then turned it into a guided fantasy so my toes would stay warm. I truly did not know how serious this was at the time, and I honestly do care, but a part of me was jealous. Just a teensy little whiny part.
While I impatiently waited for sunshine to warm the air, I also found my mind replaying the soft sultry summer nights of a “little Dixie” youth. Running barefoot on a perfect lawn. Drinking iced tea all day long while sunbathing by a pool or lake. Any pool or lake. Wearing scanty summer clothes (sans sweatshirts) well into the night. Diving silently into warm, inviting water for a midnight float.
Then other images arose. Stinging Black flies. Waking up at 3 am, shoulders on fire from all the lake time with only iodine and baby oil for protection. Hearing tornado sirens in the middle of the night and crouching in the southwest corner of the basement, holding my breath while listening to the radio for an all-clear. Sweat trickling down my back when exercising any time after 6 am. Chiggers.
Chiggers! I forgot the chiggers! In North America they’re most prevalent in the hot and humid southeast and Midwest. These tiny invisible mites who form a hole in the skin and chew up tiny parts of your inner skin, causing irritation and swelling. The red, pimple-like bumps itch like nothing else and last about a week, at least twice the length of a mosquito bite and far itchier.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I probably never actually ran barefoot over the grass even once because of those chiggers. And that I have long blessed my good fortune in escaping them by moving to my forever home across the country.
I’ve been appreciating the nostalgic moments of life review as ramblings drift in and out of contemplative moments. It’s then that I realize that most everything I think I remember may or may not be absolutely true. Reality. It has a way of dispelling the fog of romanticized recall, somewhat like the DDT “fogger” I think I remember chasing in those sun-warmed safer and simpler years.
I make a note to myself about the pink fog machine of nostalgia. And for just a minute I pause to fill with appreciation for the home I have right now, wet or chilly or domed with heat. Just as it is.
Today. Gratitude. Home Base.
May you live this summer from that solid footing.
SgB.
