Summer - Season Essay [upd]

The afternoons belonged to water. Not the ocean—we were landlocked kids—but the shimmering rectangle of a public pool. The smell of chlorine is the smell of freedom. It is the smell of wet concrete, of cheap sunscreen (Coppertone, a white smear on the nose), and of french fries from the snack bar. You waited in line, your feet sticking to the pavement, until the lifeguard blew his whistle and you dove into the shock of the blue. Underwater, the world went silent and wobbly. Above water, it was a symphony of shrieks, cannonballs, and the relentless pop music from the speakers. You measured time not by the clock, but by how pruned your fingers were. You learned the social currency of a good dive and the tragedy of a belly flop. It was here, treading water in the deep end, that you first felt the strange, thrilling ache of being exactly where you were supposed to be.

And finally, there was the night. The ultimate threshold. Lying on a blanket in the backyard, the grass damp against your back, the day’s heat still radiating from the earth. The sky was a deep, impossible purple, then black, then littered with so many stars it looked like spilled salt. My father would point out the Big Dipper. My mother would swat a mosquito on my arm. The screen door would squeak as someone went in for a glass of iced tea. This was the closing ceremony. The day, so vast and unstructured, was finally over. You could feel the summer itself slipping away, grain by grain, even as you lay there. summer season essay

Then came the slow, golden melt of the evening. The sun lost its white heat and turned a deep, buttery orange. The shadows grew long and skinny, stretching across the lawn like tired giants. This was the hour of the hose—washing the mud off our feet before we were allowed inside. This was the hour of the grill, the smell of charcoal and lighter fluid drifting from the neighbor’s yard, carrying with it the promise of hamburgers and cold watermelon. The fireflies began their silent, blinking code. We caught them in mason jars, punching holes in the lid, only to let them go an hour later, watching a single star of light drift back into the dusk. We thought we were being kind. In truth, we just wanted to watch it disappear. The afternoons belonged to water

Now, as an adult, I live in a city where the seasons are marked by the school calendar and the fiscal quarter. Summer is just the time when the office air conditioning breaks. But I still look for the thresholds. I step outside at noon just to feel the burn. I buy a peach at the farmer’s market and let the juice run down my chin. And on the best nights, I will drive an hour out of the city to a dark field, lie on the hood of my car, and watch the fireflies blink their ancient, patient code. It is the smell of wet concrete, of