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Summertime
Copyright 2012 Christina M. Guerrero
It’s a hot summer night.
I’m quite young -- just barely out of kindergarten. I’ve just woken up, suddenly, and feel disturbed, in addition to feeling hot and sticky and sweaty. Something is different.
I hear the voices in the kitchen: various family members who are up late, chatting. After a while I realize my mother’s voice is not among them.
I call out to my grandmother.
“What?” she replies.
“Where’s mommy?”
“She went to the hospital to have the baby. Go back to sleep.”
I find this satisfactory. I knew the baby was getting big enough to join us soon.
After a little while I go back to sleep.
* * * * *
It’s a hot summer night in the early 2000s.
I’m working on a manuscript and every so often frown while looking out the window, as I consider word choices, and plot points, and character traits.
The window looks onto the courtyard of two apartment buildings that are very close to each other. Somewhere in one of the buildings, a man is shouting nonsense to himself, as he does every night about this time.
The man works his way into a frenzy, and just as he seems to reach his breaking point, an annoyed female voice shouts loudly and aggressively, “SHUT UP, DUDE!”
Mercifully, the man’s voice stops.
We don’t hear from him for another twenty-four hours.
* * * * *
It’s a hot summer day.
I am about nine years old.
I’m running around the house occasionally.
Literally. From the front yard to the back yard. And vice versa.
I like the little mound of stair steps on the south side of the house: just three up and three down. Whoever built the place, put the back door about two feet above the ground. The stairs lead to the back door.
Sometimes I stop and listen.
I listen to the sounds of summer:
Small planes flying to their destinations.
Lawn mowers.
Dogs barking.
The farmer nearby, with his machinery. Sometimes a heavy scent of cilantro wafts through the air, making me hungry for Mexican food.
Then I start running again, because we’re playing hide and seek.
* * * * *
The summer of great loss is what it sounds like: terrible, full of grief, painful.
Nothing provides comfort or joy.
I recognize that things could be worse, and appreciate that ... but I wish things could go back to the way they were. It was better that way.
Sometimes I write about the loss. And then, gradually, I develop a bunch of story ideas for many genres: nonfiction articles, short stories, science fiction novels, contemporary novels.
The loss is sometimes wordless, tearless, profound. I will miss his eyes, and his smile, and his kindness. I will miss his voice, and his humor. I will miss him. We knew such happiness.
I think about writing an article about this and about grief, but feel enough has been said about it. Furthermore, it’s really not a good time for a lot of people. Who wants to read about even more bad news?
I decide to put the loss and grief into all of the writing projects.
* * * * *
From several hot summer nights in the 1970s:
I’m inside, and then outside. It’s okay; it’s a safe neighborhood. We are playing, and hanging out with the babysitter.
Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died” is a popular song, and it is on the radio often. I will always associate it with summertime.
We go inside again. It’s cool in there, with the fans blowing, in the bright blue kitchen. The babysitter is reading out loud and also listening to the radio. She says the radio noise helps her focus on the reading. Sounds complicated to me.
Outside again, with the darkness around us. But it’s a busy darkness. The neighbors are playing with us.
Back inside, where I finally think about going to sleep. We’re having a big sleepover. I’m in the living room, near the stereo. For some reason, I decide to put some spooky record on the record player and listen to it, up against one speaker; I unplug the other speaker. When it finishes, I turn everything off. No one is disturbed. Except me. I thought it would be a cool idea. Now I’m unsettled.
* * * * *
From several hot summer days on the beach:
The sun feels good after we wade in the ocean. It cools off my skin. Then it gets too hot. I try to protect my skin with suntan lotion and a towel, but my skin gets red anyway.
The suntan lotion smells good and makes me think about bare skin and relationships and dating and all that stuff. But I don’t think about it that much. It’s fine to consider that stuff for a while, but not all the time; it’s just not that interesting to me. It’s kind of like eating only ice cream or donuts, and never anything else. This outlook will stay with me for a very long time. I will be a very late bloomer about socializing, dating and relationships. The only thing I really think seriously about is wanting my children to have blue eyes like me.
The ocean smells so salty, and the sand gets everywhere. The shells are pretty; I take handfuls every time we go to the beach. Sometimes I think about careers in or on the ocean, and briefly consider marine biology. But music and journalism are calling, instead.
* * * * *
She was a good friend. She asked if I wanted to go to Disneyland one summer, so we went and had a great time with her and her family.
A few years later, I moved out of state.
We corresponded for a while.
I’m pretty sure I know why she stopped writing. She was sharing a lot about her life. That’s what friends do. Unfortunately, instead of writing back and asking her to tell me more, I wrote several judgmental things. Even now, I know I really didn’t believe those things. I was still quite young, which is my only excuse, and I was still learning how to express myself in a clear, friendly way.
About that time, she stopped writing.
I’m sorry for writing those things. I miss her, and the fun we had. She walked up to me one day in elementary school and just started talking to me. I appreciate the friendship she extended to me. And I miss her.
* * * * *
I don’t think summertime is quite the same after the late junior high and early high school years. Things pick up, and it’s time to make plans and determine what to do after high school. From ninth to twelfth grade, some students may go year round; in college, there’s that pesky thing called a summer job, which might bring in enough money to pay tuition; and after college, while employed, there are only vacations, not three months off.
* * * * *
I still think about all of these things every year, though, in the summertime.
On the first truly hot day of every year, the bright sun shines and illuminates everything around me, including my daughter’s blue-gray eyes. Sometimes when I look at her, I remember my wishes for blue-eyed children so long ago.
I tell my mom and my sibling, who is now well into adulthood, my memories of The Night Of The Birth.
I remember the losses, and wish for things to go back to the way they were.
I access “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace, their only hit, and listen to it many times, and remember the babysitter reading out loud in the bright blue kitchen, and the mysterious blue/purple sky of those nights.
I remember running crazily around the house, and smelling the cilantro wafting through the air.
I remember the sounds, most of all .. especially the way small planes putt-putt when they are flying through a clear, cornflower-blue sky.
And when I hear the planes now, I remember what it was like to be nine years old on a summer day.
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