By James Heaton

It’s the middle of September. That wonderful time of year when Summer is making her exit, her glorious exit. She really knows how to walk out the door. She leaves little bits of herself all over the place, for us to remember her glory. She is a beautiful goddess, lady Summer. She has us all wrapped in her glory.

She is best known for the hot dog days of her time with us, the days when the heat is so much on our skin that it burns. She is the hot dog on the lunch hour from the cart in the middle of the sidewalk, she is the kids playing in the fountain. She is the little kids that run around in the heat and wear their parents out. She is playful and fun. She is beauty and so much more beautiful than her sisters, the Fall and Winter, but she almost pales in comparison to her sister, Spring.

Spring welcomes Summer in such a glorious way. How we pull out our summer clothes with such fever that we cant wait to don our summer wear. We look at our thermometer and see the temp rising into the eighties and before we know it we see one hundred hanging like a dead man in the gallows. And it feels so heavy in the heat. We curse the heat and swear we can’t wait for the fall.

She is the romance you have as a kid, that romance that last just long enough to break your heart. That romance that defines summer loving. She is the girl you never learn her last name and have her face stuck in your mind when you turn forty and remember the summer of days gone past and that romance that never went anywhere because there was nowhere to go.

What was that girls name in the summer of ’82? Starr… I think, but I will never be sure. She disappeared after we exchanged numbers. She was from North Carolina and she was spending summer with her parents. We met in the gift shop of a seafood restaurant and all I could think of was how much I loved her. I was a kid.

 After all it was summer and where were you going to go anyway? Don’t make me sad, don’t take me down the road of all the summer romances that never went anywhere but the beach or the campground. I prefer to remember them for what they were, just chance encounters that left us with a little bigger heart than we first had in the beginning of summer. If anything we learned to love and that was the lesson summer was trying to teach us.

Summer gave us a little taste of the love we would one day be ready for. I met my wife in May and we had a summer romance, a time I knew I wanted to marry her. It was a beautiful summer of romance with the woman I knew I wanted to marry and it went too fast. I would give anything to relive that summer over and over, a never ending cycle of just being in love. And that is what summer is to me, love.

I remember Edie and her blue shorts at Disney, as we ran around on our vacation with the crossing guards. She had a last name but I never learned it. We kissed on the Haunted Mansion ride and I will never forget my first kiss as long as I live. I asked permission before it was normal to do, I guess I was ahead of the time. I just wanted to be kind and have her permission before I kissed her. She said yes silly, and pulled me in. I didn’t know what I was doing but that was the beauty of summer. We met years later and she still remembered that first kiss, it was hers too. You just don’t forget those things.

And the summer with Amy, she was the blond whose mom dated my dad when they were young kids, maybe they had a summer romance. I always wondered if she could have been my sister. She was the right age, or would have been if I knew math. But I sucked at math and I excelled at her. She was so taken by me that summer, we lost our virginity in the heat of a soft July day. She said it was my birthday present. And being born in the summer makes you special, right? It makes you unique, you waited until the seventh month to be born on a day divisible by seven. Surely that does something with the galaxy, it makes her happy or something like that.

The nights we caught the house on fire with our bottle rockets. It was put out easily enough but the damage was done and we ran from the cops and hid in the woods. I was the only one to be brave enough and ask the cops what was going on. He questioned where I had been and I said at the prayer group down the street. He let me go and told me that I shouldn’t be out so late. I said yes sir and made my way inside. I felt like my intestines were going to explode with nerves. But I survived and so did my friends. They hid in the woods and I was the stuff of legends for just walking home and facing the police. It was all in summer fun. The Fourth never failed to bring out the cops to our house. So many bottle rockets so little time.

And friends are what makes summer fun, it makes the sacrifices we make worthwhile. That sacrifice that is so sacred, its our time that it cries for. Time wasted for months in the summer heat, the lazy days we sat on the couch because it was too hot to go outside. We gave up those days and wasted away watching MTV when it was cool.  Back when they showed videos all day and we waited just to see our favorite song brought to life in video.

Drinking Jolt cola when it was popular and getting high off the caffeine. We thought we were big stuff. Riding our bikes to get McDonalds chicken nuggets when they first came out. We were such summer lords, making it our own. We were the kings of our world.

We watched horror movies at night and played wolf in the dark of night. One of us would wear the wolf mask and patrol the neighborhood while the rest of us went from one side of the neighborhood to the next trying not to be caught by the wolf. Oh those days seem so alive and they are as long as I can remember them. They will always live in my mind, even when I’m too old to remember my grandkids name. I will never forget; I swear on my mother’s grave. I will take those memories of summer with me and every time I close my eyes I will see the fun I had with my friends. But where are they now? Living their own lives and I hope they remember the fun we had all those nights in the summer heat.

And it was the summer nights that I will hold close forever, the music and the friendship that we promised would last forever. Hot summer nights when the moon hung low in the sky and gave us hope for the future. Where did it all go? It dissipates into the galaxy and leaves a trail of tears that come from our eyes as winter comes a little too early.

Now a days I love the evenings when the heat has dissipated and the back deck is my home with my cigars and the moon that is a constant reminder of how beautiful and young we all were. We rode bikes all summer long and our skateboards too. It was so full of life. We were so full of life, where did it all go. I remember Kristen who tried to ride the skateboard and fell in her miniskirt, we all got a look at her Hello Kitty panties as she fell and laughed it off. We were so innocent it makes me laugh.

Where did summer run off to and hide? She went to be with the kids, that’s where she went. All the new children who needed her to make their lives as memorable as mine. She went to them, for them to have the fun I so loved. It’s their turn and that tells me so much about summer, she is meant for the children.

I will never forget all the night time swims in the neighbors pool, and how we wore out our welcome so very well. I sit back and in my old age I hold her closely, and I never want to let her go. But in time I have too. She doesn’t belong to me anymore. She belongs to the children, and I wouldn’t take the summer time madness away from them because I know one day when I am dead and gone they will sit on their back porch and wonder where summer went. It’s a vicious cycle, but summer knows her business. She sits all year waiting to make life worth living.

So here is my ode to summer, thank you for the good times and the unforgettable nights you gave me and my childhood. I loved you unlike anything else. There will never be another you in my life.

I sit on my back porch and have a drink to thank her for all she gave, all the memories and the life she fulfilled with her glory. Thank you Summer, you were the best of the years and I will never let your memories flow from my brain.

I think of my granddaughter and the fun she will have, maybe she will have her first kiss in the heat of the summer months to a boy who is enamored with her as I was with all the girls I kissed. Silly dreams but they are what keep my alive and full of hope that summer never stops her magic.

Every day she grows weary of her time with us, as she retreats to another continent to give them the magic, see she doesn’t age. She just flows across the world giving her gifts to others. I pray they enjoy her as much as I did. I raise my glass as she disappears once again. Good bye summer… we loved you.