An Eternal Summer 

My favorite type of knot is a bowline knot. Strong, durable. But easy to untie. Holds strong but knows when to let go. I tied my first bowline knot when attempting to secure a sun shade at my summer job, an essential fixture to survive the scorching Virginia heat. Mid July was approaching, my least favorite of my favorite three months of the year. Midsummer was the start of the end. 

I had never wondered why summers meant so much to me. It was different as a kid. Of course I longed for the excitable prospect of beach days, for Popsicle season and later bedtime. But I longed for picking my Halloween costume and apple cider all the same. But as I grew, my longing for summer paralleled. It was no longer simply the sleeping in or the annual camping trip that enticed me, but the escapism that summer provided. 

Winter was always horrible. The world turned to black and white. Trees stood bare, leafless. The days fused together in my mind, the mundane motions bleeding into each other. I stayed in my room more. The sun shade we’d strung up was useless. Catching a ray of sun was a gift not a curse. I lived with it. I told myself this is just how it was, that I can be alive in the summer and just live through the winter. I’d found myself, mid January, counting the days, the minutes, until summer. 

It was winter when I found myself peeling off my coat at my friend's house. I stepped up her stairs slowly, a warm plate of brownies in my hand. My mom had made them. My friend cried. She cried and cried. An hour before her mother had called me to explain: Her aunt had passed away. I was never good at comforting others. I never knew what to say. So I sat next to her, said it would be okay. Gave her a hug. I didn’t realize I too was crying until the second tear dripped down off my chin. Selfishly enough it had nothing to do with her aunt or even my friend. I mean I’d never met her aunt. I cried because I noticed all the thousands of moments I’d taken for granted, all out of the assumption that there’d be a thousand more. I couldn’t wait for summers when they were everything but guaranteed. This was the only time I stopped to consider, to really wonder, what it was about summer anyway. Naturally it’s a hiatus from the stress and squalor of school. But it was never about that for me. It was the sunshine, the freedom. The possibility. Opportunity for spontaneity. It was here that it clicked, that these passions of summer lied within me. That spontaneity and freedom and possibility and yes, even sunshine, doesn’t pass with the seasons. 

So I swim in lakes and I see mountains. I get my heart broken over and over again, I love my friends and I cry more. I won't forget the miracle of being alive. I take the seasons for what they are, for the specialties that they bring. I still wish for a strong swell in the summer but just as much as I hope for snow in the winter. I approach life with rapt wonder, and a new sense of gratitude for every moment. My life started when I acknowledged that one day it would end. Summer was never about what was around me, but about the attitude and optimism I brought to it. 

I no longer fear midsummer. I, like a bowline knot, hold tight to my summers for all the joy the continue to supply. But, like a bowline knot, it’s easy to let go. Summer lives on within me, eternally.