Blue skies gray

I’m longing for the sweet summers of childhood already. Somehow, this past summer seemed to fly by too quickly. I hardly felt like I did enough sticky, sweaty, outdoorsy things; I didn’t go outdoor swimming or even intentionally run through any lawn sprinklers while I was walking the dog.

This summer 2006 wasn’t unusually cool either. We had several white-hot days with zero relative humidity; I think my garden dried up and died twice this summer. I wore ratty t-shirts and sports bras to and from work so I could put on my fresh office costume once I got into the air conditioning. I also remember walking to the train at 6 pm and searing my nostrils on the oven self-clean cycle air emanating off the sidewalks. It was so hot I couldn’t sweat until I stopped walking.

But I didn’t go to any street festivals, neighborhood fairs, or ethnic music fests. I didn’t even make it to a single farmers’ market. I missed our neighborhood block party because I worked that weekend, which is a shame because they usually invite the high-flying Jesse White Tumblers, who absolutely rule.

I heard someone say the other day that the region you are born into is what your body is acclimatized to for life. I’ve never heard that before, and I have no idea if there’s anything scientific about it, but it felt true. I yearn for Kentucky’s weather most of the year. In the summer, I remember my parents’ huge yard and hearing the motors of lawn mowers on all our neighbors’ grass. I laid and watched cottony cumulus clouds make shapes and whisper away. I ate grape popsicles and turned my lips purple (and my teeth, and my tongue). I rode bikes or ran alongside with the neighborhood kids when I was super-little, but then I got older, and I fell out of the cool group. Oh well. I still got to lie on the back porch and eat popsicles and listen to the cicadas scream in the giant tulip poplars. That means summer. Running barefoot and peeling open tulip poplar seeds, using last year’s magnolia pods as grenades, throwing whirly-gigs in the air and watching them helicopter down.

When I was about four, I had a resale shop yellow bikini. The top was ruched like a stretchy 70’s hippy dress, and it was printed with tiny flowers sprigged on it. I loved that bikini. I thought I was such a sexy grown-up swim girl when I wore it, like the big girls at the pool. I also loved running through the sprinkler in our back yard, way down over the slope where the tomato garden grew before the plants were surrendered to the squirrels and rabbits. Dad would set up an extra long hose and stretch the sprinkler all the way to the back of the property, and I’d run back and forth, inventing challenges that involved passing the water spray at certain angles.

I hated it when Dad cut the grass though. When the cut blades got wet they stuck to my bare skin and itched and felt clumpy. I’d beg Dad not to cut the grass, that it was OK for it to grow long so I could go run through the sprinkler without sticky grass. It didn’t work.

On a particular yellow bikini summer day, Dad cut the grass. I knew it, but I didn’t care—I needed to run through the water. My mom helped me put on my bikini, and I kept pulling the top down to where it felt most comfortable, which was just a little above waist height. My mom kept pulling the bikini top back up, and she said, “No, it doesn’t go there. Wear it here.” I hated it there. It felt so awkward.

“No, it feels better here,” and I’d yank it back down.

My Dad or my Mom—I can’t remember which—said, “But Christine, now people can see your breasts.”

I remember I couldn’t have cared less about showing my breasts. I’m sure I didn’t know what that meant since I was nowhere near to having them anyway, but I think I let them win and hitched it up over my chest so that they’d let me go out. There’s a picture of me that I’m positive is from that day since I’m wearing grass clippings. Dad stands above me to take the picture, and I’m half-grinning like an imp with my chin tucked down and looking up at him through my eyelashes. I think I’m holding a towel in a bunch in my hands down by my hips. My face was posed like this in most photographs because I was scared of the flash on the camera, as a result, I always look like I’m remorselessly about to steal candy in those old family photos from the 70’s.

And now, winter is seeping into Chicago. Today is a yucky, damp, rainy day with too much cold wind for the drizzle to be tolerable. It’s just yuck. The obvious difference between my childhood and adult weather is that Kentucky’s winters are milder than Chicago’s. Maybe I didn’t enjoy this past summer in every watermelon soaked slice because I’ve been dreading the return of winter. I don’t know why. Last year’s wasn’t so particularly bad, and there’s no indication that this one should be so awful, but I feel put upon that the heavy, wet snow that turns to oil-slicked black mush is on its way.

Coincidentally, I had a library reference request today for Christmas lights, even though I’ve thought of nothing but “Please spare me the agony of this winter” for weeks. For hours I sang “O Christmas Tree” to myself after finding the information my client needed. “Your boughs are green through summer’s glow, and do not fade in winter’s snow.” I used to sing that song in the summer to the straight row of pine trees that lined the back of our yard. I’d lie on the aged accumulation of long pine needles and sing songs about their enduring majesty. I think they listened.