Remembering Summer

I am taking long bike rides over giant hills with wet hair and golden sun. I am rhyming a la The Princess Bride and sipping smoothies and playing on playgrounds. I am taking goofy cell phone pictures and wearing sunscreen and wearing T-shirts and shorts with beaten-up flip flops. I am lying in bed and searching the house top to bottom for things to do, and I am exploring the neighborhood. I am taking tennis lessons and pottery classes and swimming lessons and cooking classes and babysitting courses and soccer lessons. I am going shopping and swimming and swinging in the park and accumulating more freckles on my face and arms.

I am swimming across the lake, and balancing on a wooden beam, and making a spastic, yet still enthusiastic attempt to shoot a target with a bow and arrow. I am making hemp bracelets and friendship bracelets and lanyards and dream catchers. I am eating mostly edible mess hall food and playing ping pong and dressing up. I am crammed onto a bus going up into the mountains, and I am sitting at a campfire and singing and laughing. I am having the rag tied around my neck, and promising myself to make things better.

I am sitting in the sun and getting my feet cut up in the pool, and I am walking the dog and going for frozen yogurt. I am fighting with my cousin and reading in the closet under the stairs and sprawling out on the long, narrow couch. I am walking through smoky hotels and watching the flashing lights, and I am watching movies and playing tennis and solving puzzles. I am waking up early and laying with my grandparents, and I am seeing the sights and living the dream and watching it all with my mouth agape at its sheer splendiferousness.

These are my summers, at home and at camp and with my family. These are the endless summers that make up my childhood, and when all else fades to years and stages and decades, these are what will remain.