by Melissent Zumwalt
The prompt from writing class last week was, “Summertime—wishful thinking—the summers of youth and their unparalleled magic:” an exercise intended to be fun, upbeat. Good Lord! I’d thought, was I the only one without a fondness for their childhood summers? Certainly, summer couldn’t mean the same thing for all of us? Because the first image that came to me, strong and resonant, was a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup, Sirloin Burger. The memory loomed so large, took up so much emotional space, there wasn’t any way to stop the mental film reel from re-playing:
Eleven-year-old me empties the contents of the can directly into a neon yellow plastic bowl. Bowls live in the kitchen cupboards: dark, imitation wood bleeding into muted gold vinyl-flooring. The kitchen perseveres in a time warp, always appearing like it’s 1971 even as the decades march on.
After several weeks, I discover that, upon heating the soup, I then have to wait for it to cool back down before I can eat it. Pouring from the can straight to the bowl cuts out the middle man. The bowls are a giveaway from Mainstay dog food: buy a twenty-pound bag, get a free cup or dinner plate or bowl.
We can go to the pool party after lunch, Chelsea, I say, out loud, stirring the cold, gelatinous broth against the bowl’s cheap plastic, although no one else is in the room—no one else is in the house. Chelsea is not real, except in my mind. I pretend that I’m not eleven, but sixteen, able to drive a car and go somewhere else (anywhere else) and with my imagination, I am surrounded by friends: Chelsea and Chandra and Daryl and Billy (boy names for girls, before it was cool). We spend all day together, chatting about budding romances and travel to faraway places and dancing and our favorite classes at school. And in my head, I am not alone—unbearably alone—for upwards of twelve hours each day. Day after languishing day, for three endless months.
Who knew eleven-year-olds could still have imaginary friends?
I thought I was going crazy.
*
Summers in the Pacific Northwest can have a magical quality. Winters consist of six months or more of low-slung, leaden clouds obliterating the sky, obstructing any stray beam of light, causing even the stateliest mountains to disappear. And the rain, the incessant dripping, can shift into a maddening form of water torture. Forever dripping, until the ground saturates with moisture like an overused sponge, trees laden with it, plywood-clad buildings rotting—until clothes, shoes, body, mind endure in a damp, frigid state.
Then, one day, a radiant streak emerges, followed by a gradual cascade. Chilled bodies warm in the golden air. People escape from doorways, their pasty arms hidden under sweaters and raincoats for most of the year now protruding from short-sleeved T-shirts. They lounge on lawn chairs and toss frisbees, surrounded by a glowing, green wonderland.
But that glorious transition also creates a certain freneticism, an anxiety-producing fervor: to go, do, hurry! before the brightness disappears again—before the inevitable thrust back into greyness.
*
On a summer outing—heading towards nature, to a picnic or a campground or a state park—driving down a country highway, have you ever wondered who lives in those houses you pass? Those stand-alone homes that come and go in a blur, not a soul in sight. Those desolate islands of wood and glass, swimming in oceans of hay fields and cattle pastures. Have you thought about what it might feel like to grow up in a house like that? For a kid on a lazy summer afternoon, too far removed from anything to catch a bus or ride a bike, friends who must live miles away, the nearest town farther still. The whole world distilled down to that solitary island.
*
Growing up, most of the families living within several miles of me and my family were Russian Orthodox Old Believers. After fleeing their country, they’d eventually sought refuge in the fertile soil and insular independence of the Willamette Valley. The region provided them the opportunity to be self-sufficient, to maintain traditions and eschew modern conveniences. For as long as their children attended school, many of the girls were my friends. But because their faith emphasized “spiritual cleanliness,” I wasn’t allowed over at their houses, nor were they permitted to enter mine, which meant that in summer, without the common ground of the schoolyard, our friendships withered.
*
The year before last, nearly the whole state of Oregon caught fire. Infernos raged in multiple locations along the Willamette Valley, down in Southern Oregon and in the east. Even out towards the coast, which—as unthinkable as flame in the lush, verdant valley was—more incomprehensible still were the blazes amidst the marine-cooled air of the coastal rain forests.
And here, two years later, passing through those towns reduced to cinders, the visible devastation is still fresh: half-built houses of exposed framing and weather-proof tarps, struggling to rebuild, steel posts displaying signs where local restaurants and shops once stood, blackened forests. Tents and trailers pepper the landscape, makeshift homes until the permanent ones return. Is this where people have been living for the past two years? How many were too traumatized to re-build at all? How many never had anything of their own to lose—like those renting an apartment or crammed in with distant family members? How many simply had to leave and never look back?
*
Some people think kids don’t go to school in summer because of a historical tie to farming. But crops are typically planted in spring and harvested in late summer or fall. And for rural students, who would’ve been the farmers’ children back in the day, many never even attended school at all. The current schedule actually results from the well-to-do, urban families of the late 19th century removing their kids from school during summer in order to escape the unbearable heat of the cities.
So, the wealthy children benefitted from summer vacation by retreating to the countryside with their families and experiencing nature and travel. But what about the working-class kids? Those whose parents could not run from the urban heat but instead had to continue to report to their factory jobs? Moms and Dads both struggling to make their meager paychecks last through the month. What happened to those kids—the ones like me—during summer break?
*
Agriculturally, summer represents a time of patience. A time to pause and wait for what was planted in spring to receive its nourishment, to reach full bloom. Summer is a time to trust the process: to believe that the actions one took in spring will reap results.
I have never been good at waiting.
*
I swam in a river once, at eight years old. What I remember of that experience: an interruption while reading, my babysitter-aunt saying: It’s such a nice day, why don’t you go outside? Being schlepped off on my teen-age cousin who was headed out with her friends—then immediately abandoned the moment we reached the river’s shore. The water’s slimy wetness greasing my limbs, ballooning under the borrowed T-shirt and shorts I’d been forced to wear (whose clothes were they?). Cheeks flushing as I tried to hold the top down from floating around my neck and exposing my pre-pubescent chest. Feet gripping slick stones. The thought, I can’t swim well, racing through my mind with each mighty lap of the current against my child’s body. Eyes darting, scanning for who might respond if I called out. A delicate turning, withdrawing from the river’s grasp. Sitting on the cool, sharp rocks of the bank, listening to splashing laughter in the distance, longing for the day to end.
*
Last summer, the Pacific Northwest experienced something inexplicable—something called a “heat dome.” That weather anomaly, where hot air gets trapped over a single area, like being caught in a glass jar, sounds like a sci-fi thriller, but it was real. For three consecutive days, temperatures in the city of Portland, Oregon, soared: 108-, 112- and 116-degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. The only other major U.S. cities to have ever reached 116 degrees are Phoenix and Las Vegas. Desert cities.
Over that singular weekend, the heat dome killed at least 72 people in the Portland metro area alone. The deaths were not surprising. Few have air conditioning. A well-positioned fan, making use of a cross-breeze or the early morning coolness, often lowers temperatures to a comfortable level. The people of the Pacific Northwest share a collective history of lakes and rivers, mountains and meadows. No context exists for understanding how 116 degrees can affect a body. Many thought that placing another box fan in the living room, or drinking a brain-freezing slushie would be enough to mitigate the effects of the heat dome. That it would just be a day—or three—of unusual warmth. That we could tough it out. By that point, however, the heat had already crept beneath skin. Hearts pumping feverishly, overheating organs, blood vessels dilating, thought processes slowing. By then, it was already too late.
*
On the summer solstice, the tilt of the Earth brings us the closest to the sun we will be all year, resulting in the longest period of day light. This exposure to sunlight, particularly during the lead up to the solstice as days grow comparatively longer, triggers the release of serotonin, responsible for feelings of happiness. On the solstice, we reach our zenith of light and life-sustaining energy. Another cycle complete. The next day, we immediately begin our turn towards darkness.
*
I was warned: do not move to New York City in the summer. Wait until fall. But, like any twenty-three-year-old, thinking that I had the world figured out, I left the moment the urge struck.
For a young adult whose total life experience had consisted of the Pacific Northwest up till then, the humidity of July in NYC stung like a wet towel being slapped across my face.
Great fiery pits are often used to depict hell. But no—hell must be the 42nd Street Subway Station on a 97-degree day. Winding through a subterranean labyrinth the length of a full city block from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch an uptown-bound train. Throngs of sticky bodies shuffling through corridors of unforgiving concrete and motionless air. Gasping for breath in the suffocating thickness, like trying to inhale through soggy cotton candy. Rivulets of sweat dribbling from the ends of my hair, worming their way down the hollows of my neck, a constant trickle under my shirt, sliding between breasts, pooling at the small of my back where damp fabric clung to my spine.
All the while praying that the deep rumbling under my feet would stir up some relief as the soon-to-approach train flashed by. Disappointingly, all that the passing cars ever managed to do was kick up a dirt-infused whisper, tickling my perspiration-soaked ankles with an unidentifiable grime.
In my sparkling new NYC life, I had wanted the city to find me physically beguiling, magnetic, to don fashionable shoes and stylish haircuts. Instead, I limited myself to a uniform of simple T-shirts and sneakers, trying to minimize where sweat would show and stain, hair clipped back from my face and limited make-up to minimize streaks and runs. Trying to survive in my new environment without appearing like a total wreck.
*
My mother informed my standard of beauty. In my youth, she was a dancer—a slim woman with shapely legs who lamented not being able to wear shorts in public. My varicose veins, she’d say, are too unsightly.
Just wear the shorts, I’d reply, a kid who didn’t know any better. No one cares.
Though once I developed varicose veins myself—puffy blue ribbons streaming down the backs of my legs, raised purple welts around knees and ankles, looking like I’d been assaulted with a baseball bat—shorts were out for me, too.
Skirts and sundresses potentially hide the veins (depending on length) and make for pleasant warm weather-ware. But I’ve always had larger inner thighs, no matter how skinny I was. Thighs that rub and chafe and demand to be separated from one another. Requiring tights to always accompany dresses, especially in the heat, when slippery flesh burns against itself. Which means, even when temperatures swelter, I don’t have much latitude to adjust my wardrobe. All I can do is bide my time until the cooler weather arrives, to revel in scarves and sweaters.
*
After my life’s trajectory departed NYC, but before it returned me to the Pacific Northwest, I passed a decade in San Francisco, still chasing more of what life had to offer. During that phase, how many times had someone delivered the quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?” How many of those people were still erroneously attributing the remark to Mark Twain? How many of them had ever really experienced a summer in the city by the bay? Because, after one year in San Francisco, and then a decade, sixty-five degrees (plus or minus a degree or two) seems just about perfect for maintaining a human life.
Being at Ocean Beach or out in the Sunset neighborhood on a late summer afternoon afforded one the opportunity to watch white fog rolling off the ocean, cresting onto shore like a tsunami wave, then unfurling over the city, blanketing building tops. A moment singularly unique, sustained like a secret on this country’s far western edge, a diminutive seven-mile by seven-mile jut of land protruding into the great Golden Gate. Swaddled in a cocoon, a world unto itself.
*
Neighboring farms, those surrounding my childhood home, used to harvest garlic in late summer. The aroma was pervasive, pungent, so deliciously sweet it bordered on stench. Indoors, outdoors, the odor, inescapable. A frenzied smell that made me nostalgic for a life I had not yet lived.
An early evening breeze used to push through the tired screen on my bedroom window. As the radio played, stuck on a station of soft rock hits from a bygone era, I sat on the floor, gulping lung-fuls of the fragrance, growing intoxicated with unrequited desire and hope. Waiting, impatiently, for whatever was to come.
Melissent Zumwalt is an artist and administrator who lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a 2023 Best of the Net finalist and her written work has appeared in Arkana, Full Grown People, Hippocampus, Longridge Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. Read more at: melissentzumwalt.com
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