“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back porch in a cot or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.” — Harper Lee
Harper Lee has a way of describing anything and making it sound profound; this quote is no exception. Summer can be a magical time, or it can be the dog days of heat and haze. Some of my friends’ parents would ship them off to camp, but we stayed put for the most part. When I was little, there were endless days at the beach, drinking those tiny plastic barrels of sugary colored water and chasing the ice-cream truck. On hot nights, we were allowed to sleep on our sun porch with all the windows open.
I grew up when gangs of neighborhood kids roamed around each others’ yards, explored the woods, and went on epic adventures, catching fireflies or building tree forts. Summer meant the added attraction of sandcastles, tide pools, and at least one blistering sunburn.
When I outgrew those days, summer vacation meant I had to earn a little spending money and keep out of my mother’s way. I babysat and worked at McDonald’s and usually spent my afternoons with my friends, flirting with boys at the beach or driving aimlessly around town with whoever could borrow a car from their parents. The summer I was 16, my boyfriend had a rusty old International pickup truck, and we’d ride over to the Salem Willows to play Skee-Ball and get popcorn.
When I started college, summer was all about internships and networking. I spent time commuting to Boston and working in high-rise buildings to build my resume. It’s where I got my typing speed up to 90 words per minute, a skill that would serve me well during the school year when I’d charge my classmates a dollar a page to type their term papers. Wherever I worked, there were always other college students around, and we managed to sneak into bars for happy hour after work and shop for bargains at Filene’s Basement during our lunch hours. Finally, at the end of four years of college, I realized that having 10 weeks of sun, sand, and shenanigans would be a thing of the past.
It was as if the summer gods had flipped a switch, turning the fun into three regular months of work, just like the rest of the year. The magic was gone. There would be no last day of school, no beach bonfires, or dripping ice-cream cones. That first summer of adulting can be brutal.
After a while, you get used to it, though, and then, for some, children come along. Instead of reliving your childhood summers, you plan for time off, child care, and the dog days of swim lessons and playground time. The feral childhood I enjoyed was gone; in these modern times, you can’t shove a 7-year-old out the door every morning and tell them to come back at lunch. There are no neighborhood wanderings or bicycle rides to nowhere.
With the help of good friends and great camp counselors, I got through those days, occasionally swapping out treats from the ice-cream truck with a cold adult beverage and dinner picnics at the beach after work. Each year, I’d buy a plastic kiddie pool and an assortment of buckets, shovels, and sand toys from the dollar store and transform the backyard into a battleground for Super Soaker wars and water-balloon fights.
Today, my kids have run the gamut of their own summers, from playdates, camps, and summer jobs to working year-round as grown adults. So, where does that leave me? I’m a freelancer who works remotely, and yes, luckily, that means that sometimes I can sit on the beach and still get some work done. I don’t have to choose a camp or arrange playdates, and there hasn’t been a kiddy pool or a swing set in my backyard in at least a decade.
I will still savor the blue hour at my beach when it’s low tide and the sun is sinking. It’s the perfect time to grab a sandwich and dunk my toes in the surf. The Salem Willows still has the best popcorn anywhere, and the Skee-Ball machines still cost a quarter, so now and then, I treat myself to a childhood favorite. Summers will change as we age, but there’s always a bit of magic if you know where to look.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years, and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.