Summers gone by
A look back at the 93 days that changed me, every year.
For a grown-up, the saddest part of the year is summertime.
It sounds counterintuitive, given that we spend all year salivating over its arrival. For most of us, summer means 93 days to live the kind of shamelessly joyful and reckless life we don’t think we deserve to have for the whole 365. Leave work an hour early, wear a skirt that’s a little too short, invite him up even though it’s only the first date…summer is a blanket baptism that absolves us from all of our sins, and even the most godless among us fall to our knees to worship at its altar year in and year out.
But that’s why summertime is so sad for grown-ups: we waste our 93 days on rooftop parties, all-white kicks, a fresh weave—things that come and go every year but never really amount to anything in the end. The real summers that I remember with sweet nostalgia are the summers of my youth, the ones that chewed me up in June as one person and spit me out in September as someone completely different. The season was electric because it was wired with possibility, and not the “Will I make it up to the Vineyard this year?” kind of possibility, but the real chance that there was this new version of yourself out there and it was your adventure to find it. Some of that thirst for self-discovery still remains in adulthood, but now we’re just going through the motions when we used to pursue it voraciously as kids.
The real summers that I remember with sweet nostalgia are the summers of my youth, the ones that chewed me up in June as one person and spit me out in September as someone completely different.
My best summers were spent at 1515 E. 193rd St. in Euclid, Ohio with three siblings, our mischievousness and silly exuberance bursting from the doors and window panes of our house into the sweltering Midwestern heat. During the school year my parents did all they could to try and contain it, but in the summer John and Victoria collapsed under the weight of the previous nine months of band concerts, basketball games and parent teacher conferences. Exhaustion conspired with apathy to give birth to our freedom, and we were left to figure it out on our own from June until September. For four kids that lived an otherwise tightly regimented life year-round the lack of supervision was tantamount to a full-blown jailbreak.
The most important factor to a successful summer was who you rode with; your crew was everything, and having a lame one meant those three months would be miserable. My crew consisted of my siblings (two older sisters and a younger brother), Britney and Adam from next door, Andrew from down the street, and a rotating cast of play cousins and school mates that filled out the group when babysitters fell through or grandmas got sick. We weren’t deep but what we lacked in numbers we made up in athleticism; tall, wiry frames balanced out small, quick builds, making us a formidable challenge to the other cliques we’d compete against around the neighborhood.
Real estate was our greatest asset. My family had the biggest backyard on the entire street, complete with a swingset and a meticulously groomed lawn, and next door Britney and Adam had a long, freshly-paved driveway with a basketball hoop at the end. Between our two houses we had kickball and basketball games on lock, not to mention secondary draws like tag and HORSE, and even the rare appearance of a slip-n-slide when it was hot enough to convince my mother that wasting all of that water was worth it. Our little stretch of E. 193rd was regarded as a bonafide powerhouse to the other kids on that block.
And that block was all we knew for those three months; we were raised, brought up and transformed into enterprising young adults on those streets. Not to say we were moving weight or anything like that, (unless you define “weight” as Little Debbie snacks and quarter waters), but there was an abiding sense of lawlessness that governed our daily comings and goings. Our mom would wake us up in the morning, feed us, and promptly kick us out of the house right after breakfast, forbidden to return until dinnertime. That space in between was a precious nine hours where grown-ups were gone and kids ruled the world, like a Lord of the Flies societal experiment come to life.
Not to say we were moving weight or anything like that, (unless you define “weight” as Little Debbie snacks and quarter waters), but there was an abiding sense of lawlessness that governed our daily comings and goings.
We reigned until dusk when a chorus of voices came booming from windows and thinly-cracked screen doors, bellowing “DINNER, INSIDE NOW!” and signaling the end of our dominion for the day. Even though we’d been out since sunup we’d always retreat inside reluctantly, a thick layer of must and soil coating our skin and our oily limbs adorned with fresh scabs and new scars like a Christmas tree decorated with raggedy, flesh-colored ornaments. We’d eat, replenish, and prepare for whatever new challenge awaited us the next day, like plotting revenge over a stolen bike or gearing up for a fight between two rivals at the park down the street. Those 93 days were wide enough to hold the unraveling of a million little subplots, and we were industrious at generating enough dramas and tragedies to keep ourselves entertained for the entire summer.
After I switched from public to private school in 7th grade, I felt like I had outgrown the standard summer neighborhood storylines. I saw them as relic of a former life that was now unfit in the eyes of the prep school glitterati, the 12-year-old girls armed with Ugg boots and bubblegum pink G-shock watches that governed our middle school caste system. In order to rise from the bottom rung, I decided it was time I went to a proper summer camp like the rest of my classmates. They were all summering at upscale destinations throughout the Midwest with regal, blue-blooded names like Falcon or Gryphon, names that said with a condescending smirk, “If you have to ask how much it costs to go to camp here, then you probably can’t afford it.” It was one of the first times in life I realized that there’s this whole world of things—a private little club of experiences and opportunities—that money could buy you access to. Some people were born into it and others were left on the outside looking in, faces pressed up against the window and fingerprints dripping with desperation and jealousy smudging the otherwise pristine glass. I wanted in, and I saw camp as my golden ticket.
I saw them as relic of a former life that was now unfit in the eyes of the prep school glitterati, the 12-year-old girls armed with Ugg boots and G-shock watches that governed over our middle school caste system.
I asked my mom first. She just repeated the word over and over again in increasingly higher-pitched tones (camp? CAMP? CAMP?), like some mad hybrid of Rainman and Allen Iverson during his signature “practice” rant. I asked my dad afterward just in case; he just looked me up and down, wordlessly crushing my dream with that crisp, heavy glare dads are so good at. To them, the idea of paying for their kids to spend a few weeks pretending to be poor people in the woods was an ironic American luxury that didn’t mesh well with their West African sensibilities. Plus, only white people went to camp. I wasn’t white, ergo, I shouldn’t go to camp, a sophisticated use of the transitive property to determine racially appropriate behavior. In my devastation I did what any normal 11-year-old would do: I watched the Lindsey Lohan version of Parent Trap over and over again that summer, imagining all of the adventures Hallie, Annie and I were supposed to be having at that heartbreakingly beautiful camp featured in the movie.
When I look back at the fuss I made, I wish understood what I do now: youth is the great equalizer. Being a kid in the summer meant that we were all kind of doing the same thing and having the same type of fun, regardless of location or income or privilege. Before we’re taught to be self-conscious of our shortcomings, we’re just concerned with what’s right in front of us: running out to catch the ice-cream truck, scoring the winning goal in the neighborhood soccer game, figuring out a way to get bedtime extended by one precious hour. It’s the reason parents spend hundreds of dollars on toys but then kids just end up building a fort with cardboard boxes and having way more fun in the end—they just want the simplest route to happiness, status or wealth be damned. And so, I may not have had the name or the absurd price tag, but I always had my own version of camp right there in front of me.
Being a kid in the summer meant that we were all kind of doing the same thing and having the same type of fun, regardless of location or income or privilege.
Our mess hall was the corner store, a watering hole where gossip and laughter flowed freely and abundantly. We’d barrel in each afternoon with whatever loose change we managed to scrounge up that day and leave with a small bounty of freezepops, Hawaiian Punch and honeybuns, the culprits for the sticky layer of sugar that lingered on our fingers for the entire season.
While the other little girls learned tap or jazz at camp, we had our own version of dance class: sneak-watching videos on BET Uncut late at night when our parents were asleep, studying the women juking and gyrating with focused intent. We debuted our best imitations of their moves in basements and backyards at cookouts throughout the summer, performing dances like the crybaby or the butterfly while someone kept lookout to make sure no parents caught sight and labeled us the “fast” girls.
And there was no pit for a roaring campfire, but every 4th we managed to get a hold of fireworks, which we’d smuggle and set off in someone’s backyard. The whole street would light up with a yellow-orange glow, the crackle of the sparklers mixing with the cackles of our gleeful laughter, until the old lady next door called the police on us and we scattered to various hiding places across the block, disposing of our contraband hastily in trash cans and dumpsters along the way.
While the other little girls learned tap or jazz at camp, we had our own version of dance class: sneak-watching videos on BET Uncut late at night when our parents were asleep, studying the women juking and gyrating with focused intent.
And I could go on and on like this, about the ways that we filled up those 93 days to the brim and made it seem like we had everything before we realized we had very little. It was before we were all set along different paths, some of us ushered into Ivy League universities and HBCUs, others forgotten in juvie or various corners and pockets of the streets we grew up on. It was before we were forbidden to play with “those kids”, even moving to a whole new block on the other side of town to escape their influence completely. But it was still too early to worry about those things back then so we didn’t, and summer remained a wellspring of possibility that we drank from together, blissfully ignorant of how the world would divide and apportion us as worthwhile or useless in the years to come.
When I think about how our approach to the season evolves as we move into adulthood, it’s clear that we’re all just trying to get back to where we started, chasing that same effortless thrill that we first mastered as kids. We have new vehicles now—summer flings, concert festivals, weekend getaways—but come September it still feels like there’s something missing, a nagging feeling that we didn’t make the most out of the chance we were given. Every new summer is a bittersweet reminder of how far we are from grasping it once again, but on each June 21st and the long, muggy days that follow I can’t help but feel energized and hopeful that maybe this time, this year, is our chance to get that old thing back.
