Memories of childhood summers are bittersweet

By: Kim Underwood | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: June 22, 2009

For 11 years, I lived in San Francisco, where summer, as it's experienced in most of the country, doesn't exist.

Summer in San Francisco means the fog rolling in most every day and weather that's routinely quite chilly. In summer, tourists become even easier to spot -- they were the ones doing a lot of shivering because they didn't know better than to head out into the day wearing shorts and no coat.

Every year about this time, I would get depressed when it sunk it that I was going to miss yet another real summer.

When I moved back to North Carolina, I was delighted to return to a world with true summer. But a hint of depression still taps me on the shoulder at this time of year when I remember that, for the foreseeable future, summers filled with day after day of knocking about are behind me.

Reminded of summers long ago

The feeling had been hovering ever since Sparkle Girl got out of school for the summer. With fourth grade behind her, she is in full summer mode. Art camp last week. Spanish camp this week. And, when I come home from work, I might find her stretched out on the couch reading a Betty & Veronica Double Digest magazine.

Seeing her there reminds me of summers long gone when I would read for hours on end, and, I think, "Ah, that's the life."

When it came to summer reading as a kid, I perhaps took it a little too far. I read so much that, periodically, my mother would come in, take the book I was reading out of my hand and kick me out of the house.

"I don't want to see you again until it's time for supper," she would say.

Once I was outside playing badminton in the Hendersons' yard down the street, Wiffle ball on one of the nearby vacant lots or shuffleboard on our driveway, I would be happy to be there. Left to my own devices, though, I often would look for adventure in books and comics rather than out in the world.

I was only half-conscious that I was entering the annual "nostalgic for summers as a kid" mode, though, until Sparkle Girl said, "Kim, when does your summer vacation start?"

Aargh!

Playing hide-and-seek until dark

"Well," I said, "once you grow up and start working, you may get little vacations during the summer but you no longer get the whole summer off. Mostly, you just keep working."

She gave a noncommittal grunt. Not something she needed to worry about.

Since her question, I have been flipping in earnest through my mental album of summer memories. One of my favorites comes from the days when we lived in West Virginia. In general, that was a good time for me. We lived in a town of 6,000, and, at the age of 10, I could travel on my own throughout the known universe, something that's not possible for Sparkle Girl and her younger brother, Doobins.

Anyway, there was a vacant lot directly across the street from our house. On the corner next to it sat a bank. (I once found a dollar in the parking lot. It's the richest I have ever felt.)

After supper, kids would just show up in the lot and start a game of hide-and-seek that used a spot on the side of the bank as base. Earlier in the day, kids tended to play mostly with kids about their own age. But hide-and-seek worked just fine with kids of a range of ages. Players would come and go, and the game would dissolve when it was too dark to see well enough to have fun.

For 45 years, I have pulled that memory out at this time of year as a reminder of a time when life seemed more carefree. I know that, to some extent, the memory is a half-truth. For kids, summers also bring boredom and mosquitoes.

When Sparkle Girl and I came back from a recent walk, she pointed out to Doobins the blood smear on her leg where she had slapped a mosquito and explained to him that the blood wasn't the mosquito's, it was hers.

Doobins was quite impressed.

■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.