Summer Lives
Every June, my mind drifts back to the summer days of my childhood. How we waited for the last day of school to arrive so that we would be free! Itching to kick off our shoes, pull on our shorts, grab our bikes, and head into adventure! Summer days, summer friends, and summer adventures awaited.
I spent most of my summer with my neighborhood friends. Up early and out the door before breakfast, riding our bikes, hair flying in the wind, breathing in the cool morning breezes before the heat rose, we’d cruise around the blocks making plans. Perhaps we’d build a fort on an island in the creek. Maybe we’d have an adventure in the woods behind the park. Would we spend the morning making crafts at the recreation center or playing ball? Certainly we’d be carrying gimp in our pockets and maybe a nickel for an ice pop. Surely we’d spend the evening on the bleachers in the Little League Park.
Afternoons, when the sidewalk burned through our flip-flops, were swim club times — rubbing a mixture of baby oil and iodine onto our skin for the darkest tan, vying for the best spots to put our blankets, scoping out the boys, playing a forbidden game of pool tag (that we called tidily winks to outwit the lifeguards), sucking on cups of ice (the only thing we could afford at the snack bar), and watching our little sisters and brothers. If only our parents knew how little we watched! Thank goodness for those lifeguards.
Summer places are important but summer friends are priceless. My friends and I joined outside-our-neighborhood groups and learned about the larger world. While bobbing up and down in the deep end of the pool, racing each other underwater to see who could hold their breath longest, or playing another forbidden game of tag, we’d discuss our various schools, families, and communities, our deep thoughts, and our admittedly limited experiences. Evenings chatting on porch swings, playing hide and seek at dusk, or chasing lightning bugs in the back yards ended when the street lights came on. Deep friendships forged in June to August held fast from September to June.
The part of summer I most anticipated was the few weeks spent at my grandparents’ bungalow on the Great South Bay on Long Island, on a street that ended in sand, reeds, and mosquitoes. Here I didn’t just have friends — I had cousins. Dozens of them! Paisanos — friends and family from the old country scattered during the school year and gathered in summer to drop into each others’ houses, laugh, cry, shout, hug, and eat. Oh, how we ate!
Nonnas (grandmothers) hoarded their grandchildren during the summer, keeping them during the week while parents worked in “the city.” The Nonnas began cooking before the sun peaked over the bay. The big kids, cousins over eight, were out even earlier, pulling the net to gather bait, fishing from the pier for blowfish, or rowing into the bay for “frutti del mare,” the fruit of the sea: crabs, clams, mussels, blue fish, flounder, fluke, eels, and anything else you could catch with a net, lift with a rake, or lure onto a hook. Before breakfast, we’d have caught our dinner delivered like a gift to our grandparents.
After breakfast, imagination reigned. A dry-docked rowboat became a sailing ship crashing through waves tossing us into the sea where we’d wash up on a deserted island, build a hut, scrounge for food, and discover friendly (we hoped) natives. Fairy tales adapted as beach tales became plays, sometimes with written scripts, for weekend performances when the grandfathers and parents, our most appreciative audience, arrived. Board games lasted for weeks! With our bikes, we explored for miles from street to street or beach to beach, gathering artifacts to display in our neighborhood museums of shells and driftwood, and widening the scope for more imaginative stories for adventures on another day. If you didn’t have a bike, a cousin would boost you up behind or hoist you up on the handlebars and off you’d fly.
Little kids, those under five, triked up and down the pebbled road while the Nonnas sat on front stoops trading stories in dialects their immigrant parents brought from the old country. Teasing, tears, and laughter, seasoned their stories, hands punctuating the air, and, even though the language was foreign, we knew when to laugh and when to cry while snuggling in an ample lap.
After lunch, our goal was the beach. While the little kids napped and the Nonnas cleaned up, we grabbed our suits, towels, shovels, and buckets and walked the long walk (a block and a half) to the bay. There, we’d either wade in the bay or paddle in a pool after an older cousin or adult opened the fire hydrant that filled it with saltwater from the bay. On the best days, when parents were with us, the whole neighborhood piled into whatever cars were available and drove to the ocean beach over the bridge to Fire Island. Dragging thermoses, coolers, blankets, umbrellas, strollers, cribs, and laundry baskets filled with towels, buckets, shovels, cover-ups, cameras, and suntan lotion across the hot sand, we’d find the perfect spot, drop it all and dive into the waves — or wade into the ripples if you were more timid. Never fear, an older cousin or a Mom or Dad were there to coax you out deeper holding your hand (the Moms) or throwing you in (the Dads) to ride the waves back to the beach so proud of yourself that you’d run right back to do it again. When you were worn out, you’d flop onto a blanket, to watch wicked games of Go Fish, Crazy Eights, or Rummy the adults played. Little kids dug holes, older kids built castles, and teens buried each other in the sand. Now and again, a little one wandered off setting off a frantic search, someone running to alert the lifeguard, but thankfully, always found sitting behind a pile of sand, sleeping on a blanket, or following the ice cream vendor.
Late in the afternoon, returning exhausted to our little street and renewing our energy with an outdoor cold-water shower, we’d prepare for the highlight of the day — dinner. Frutti del mare paired with frutti del giardino (tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, lettuce, basil, and whatever Grandpa planted) were presented as gifts by the Nonnas to the large outdoor table under the arbor where everyone was welcome. On the weekends, we added cannoli, biscotti, or panettone for dessert.
Evenings were times for hide and seek, catching fireflies, chatting on the long bench by the garden, performing plays, or playing cards under the arbor. On weekends, the older folks built a fire in a rusting grill we gathered around after dark to share stories, cups of coffee, and bug repellent. Finally, filled with good food, good stories, and mosquito bites, we’d drift off to bed to dream of more glorious days filled with adventures and cousins, cousins, cousins.
Well into my Nonna-years now, the first warm day, the smell of basil, fireflies lighting the garden, the sound of flip-flops, or an itching mosquito bite pulls me back to my summer friends and family. Our summer lives carry us through our winter years. Memories forged in the heat of summer hold strong warming us forever.
