Summer’s Over
I vaguely remember the summers when the ice cream truck would come. Initially, I loved the cookies and creme ice cream bar, so I’d get the cookies and creme ice cream bar. The pebble-like consistency and almost doughy taste was the epitome of sweetness in my 5-8 year old eyes. After some time, I stopped getting the cookies and cream ice cream bar. I don’t have a specific reason as to why, but I simply stopped. From then on, I’d alternate between strawberries and cream and the themed cartoon character ice creams. One of my favorites was the Powerpuff Girls themed ice creams. A badass trifecta: Buttercup, Blossom, and Bubbles. The endless baby blue pigmented on Bubbles drew the attention of my eyes. A nostril hint of her bubblegum eyes and the chilly frost and the lick of vanilla embraced the hunger of my young appetite. After a long day of parading around, dancing around outside in my rollerblades with the sweltering heat emitting sweat from my body, a glow of bliss and fulfillment appeared not only in my stomach but in my four foot body’s bumping heart.
Ice cream, a single dipped cone, is $10 in New York City, where I spent two weeks in a creative writing and food culture course this summer after graduating high school. My roommates came from abroad (Brazil, Portugal, and Italy) and I-the sole American-was too culture-shocked. Google Maps navigation, celsius conversions, and analysis of media I would never have thought of. I had never done anything like that. From each previous summer spent in my K-12 education, though I had fun-too much fun, I tried to focus on some “academic” aspect like reading or writing. “Being a writer” followed me my whole life but I was unsure over and over again. I wasn’t good enough.
But I learned so much about myself. I crafted my craft and it was hard but it built me up and affirmed. You see I guess there’s not a perfect blueprint to being a writer but when I gave it time, somehow everything felt alright. Like the words flowed right out and the fountain pen of my mind stood solid. There were these random bits my instructor told the class, within a week of class, writing may not be the most money-generative field but I knew this going into it and I still chose it. Writing is more than typing on a computer. It’s opening myself up to life, to change, buying me time to go back into my comforts and see what’s outside.
As deeply as I’m breathing in, resisting the hot and humidity around me in the climates of Texas and New York, I can’t settle on one thought. The start, the middle of it, is always just on the tip of my tongue, entrusted in the pit of my gut. My bitter music dabbles on “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac and Bon Iver’s “Re: Stacks.” Sylvia Plath is still on my reading list. I talk just a bit more now. And I tell myself in bites that it’s okay to feel sad. I try to savor every summer like it was the last; appreciate these days cause I know it won’t be the same. I’m getting older and the same friends I have, I’m loving from a distance. Faces change, places do, and the intrinsic way I stay seated in a different spot reminds me of how far I’ve not only come but am. I’m reminded each and every time of how the day passes through and the night runs on. Coated in so many different ways. The way I used to run, and now I’m walking at a steady pace. I never gave the time to the season so I’ll say it now. Summer came with its agonizing tumultuous rush. The blazing heat, landscape sights of distanced cities, I don’t feel the same way I used to. I’m going to be an “adult” or I already am-I still don’t know and here I was thinking turning 18 was the hardest part. As I’m embarking on these new adventures, for this new permanency, summer feels only temporary yet it transfers into now, maybe I’m just temporary.
I have this feeling of a gusty windstorm inside, brewing, caught in the most imperfect of air. It’s sort of simmering, dancing around, and with every step I can feel it inside. It’s an old friend, somewhere out in the world. It’s the wind. And when it blows, I hope it blows my way. I hope it’s just a little wistful. I don’t wanna feel “before” but I wouldn’t mind if it passes by. It’s made a better part of me. Nothing could ever stay the same, I’m never the same. Sometimes I am set in my ways but the touch and lenses of my world change. Impotently paving the way. And all of this to say I know now.
Summer’s over but it’s here now.
