One of These Mornings You're Gonna Rise Up Singing

Last week we officially entered into Summer. It's my favorite season and feels all too fleeting every year.

I've been having such a wonderful Summer this year, and it reminded me of my relationship with this season throughout the years. It's a feeling. A sometimes lonely, slower, time full of nostalgia and promise.

My memory of Summers in Arizona gets confused with the Winters and the Falls and the Springs. It can all be a hazy memory of warmth and freedom and being outside all of the time. For the most part, I loved my childhood, up until my mom died. We had very little structure and that was perfect for me. In the Summer we would go see old movies for free at the Junior high - Three Stooges and Jerry Lewis and anything ridiculous and G rated. In the afternoons, we went to the pool a lot. I remember the songs on constant rotation, "Drift Away" and my favorite, "Shambala". My brother and I would ride our bikes for hours and when we'd tell people where we rode to, they wouldn't believe us.

After my mom died, we moved to a suburb of Chicago until high school and my Summers there still weren't too bad, since we weren't as isolated yet. I had to do plenty of chores and my Aunt and Uncle were still abusive, but they were surrounded by their family and probably didn't feel like they could get away with the stuff they did later. My Summers there were spent as much as possible at the softball fields in Merrionette Park, trying desperately to fit in with the cool kids. The late seventies pop music filled every backyard with everything from "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp to the "Grease" soundtrack to disco, disco, disco. Back then I had daydreams of being a stand-up comic and also having a boyfriend (like that was the end all, be all...).

The Summer before 9th grade we moved to Iowa. Those four years were the worst of my life so far. I dreaded Summer because I was stuck at home with my abusive aunt all day. Most days she would hide in her room and sleep all day and we would have to wait all day for her to get up and "check the list" before we were allowed to go anywhere or do anything, and when she didn't sleep all day, she was in a mood and our lives would be hell. My only reprieve would be the couple of weeks that I got to detassel corn. When I tell people I liked to detassel corn, they usually tell me that was probably circumstantial. I listened to The Clash and Joe Jackson and The Police all the time back then. Since I wasn't allowed to go out much, I had very few friends and lived through the books I read. The soundtrack of those Summers until sometime in June were filled with the sound of frogs singing to get laid and later, closer to July, the constant buzzing of cicadas.

My first Summer after I graduated high school and went to two different colleges, I was living in Iowa City. I thought once I was able to flee from my aunt and uncle that I would be instantly happy, but I had to spend years and years working through my self-esteem issues and the feeling that I deserved to be treated badly by people. That first Summer in Iowa City was a lonely, lost, time for me. I used to walk for hours and hours and hours, when I wasn't working. It was also the Summer that moved me forward to California the next year.

My Summers in California were beautiful and overwhelming. The first Summer there I was in Northern California doing hard physical labor and learning how to deal with being in a relationship with my first boyfriend. Like most of us, I put up with WAY more shit than I should have. My Summer in San Francisco was really like Fall or early Spring with lots of fog and and cooler temps and confusion about how to be an adult and what to do with my life and wah, and wah, and wah.

When I moved back to Iowa City, my Summers were good and bad. I got back into running and that helped my emotional and mental health so much. I usually lived close to downtown and that always felt so lonely to me. Most students go home for the Summer, and the closer to campus you go, the less populated it is. I worked in food service most of that time, so I usually had days to play outside and worked at night, but I didn't know how to drive, so I was pretty much stuck in the downtown area of Iowa City with very little chance of escape.

When my kids were younger, my Summers were stressful. I had to pay for full time daycare, and I couldn't afford the part-time daycare I paid for during the school year. I would try to save my vacation time, to have some fun during the Summer break and on Saturdays when the girls were really young, we would always go to the pool, then head to the Dairy Queen on Riverside Drive and then go home to take a nap in the one room that had a window air conditioner. Summers when the girls were older were much better. I didn't have to pay all that money to put them in a Summer program and we were in a neighborhood with lots of kids their age and parents who either worked in the evenings or from home or not at all during the Summer, so I knew my kids were fine while I was at work.

These days my Summers are grander than grand. Sure, I have to work, but my job is fine and kids are grown and for the first time in my life I live in a house with more bedrooms than people. Weird. Once John moved in and paid his part of the mortgage, for the first time in my life, I could pay my bills every month. I still don't have much in savings and I can't afford to travel much, but I've never not been stressed out about money before, so it feels luxurious. My Summers don't feel lonely, or too quiet. I don't have to make hard choices every day or put up with someone telling me what a bad person I am, or threatening me, and I never feel like I don't know what to do with myself when I'm alone. If anything, I have so many things I'm excited about, that I don't know which thing to do first. My days are filled with the sounds of the birds singing and the buzzing of bees in my garden. Sure, my hormones are making me fat and sending me on an emotional roller coaster a lot of the time (don't ever let me watch one of those videos where the soldiers come back home after being deployed and their dogs go crazy greeting them, because I will lose my shit), but that's only temporary, right? RIGHT?!

I have lived through a lot of hot, harrowing Summers to get to this point. So, I appreciate all of the good that I have, as often as possible and I try not to waste a drop of a warm, wonderful, day or a chance for adventure. I love feeling like I am doing exactly what I should be doing and right where I want to be in my life. After all of those years and past Summers, it's taking some getting used to.