The Summers of My Life
A nostalgic look back at the summers (and some of the friends) that made me who I am today.
Ah, summer in the Midwest: heat hangs heavy, cicadas brood, and the humidity increases as the sweet corn begins to reach toward the sky. It all makes me nostalgic for the lazy summers of my past, when I didn’t have to work and with reckless abandon I could run amok with friends, without a care in the world.
It’s truly not fair that we don’t get summers off as adults. But for the record, if we ever have the option to receive Autumn off instead, I will be among the first to sign up.
When summer finally makes its long-awaited entrance, I think about my hometown — a very small, extremely rural town with a population of around 900 in Northwestern Indiana. I spent the first eighteen years of my life there and even though I rarely visit anymore, I find myself reminiscing about those lazy summers in that tiny little dot on the map.
Summer was our time. Visiting the library (holla to the summer reader program peeps!) to get my hands on the latest Baby-sitters Club Super Special. Renting a VHS or three to get through a boring weekday. Swimming for hours in my aunt’s pool at the family farm. Riding my bike with friends in town, bouncing from house to house, grabbing turkey sandwiches and strawberry slushees from The Dairy Store in between.
My town was home to a Fourth of July festival that had visitors from all over the country. Really. I remember always being in awe of that — who actually chose to visit this remote speck of Midwestern farmland? Sure, there was a cool flea market and some carnival rides. Local bands played in the park leading up to the car show or other events taking place in the tiny town park. The parade and its participants made way through the route that couldn’t be longer than a half-mile in total (given our town was only about a mile in length), tossing candy to onlookers. Oh, and our fireworks were definitely the highlight of the festival — some of the best in the area. My bias is popping up here because, well, I never saw fireworks from another Independence Day celebration until I was in my twenties. Regardless, I stand by the sentiment that my hometown had an incredible fireworks display to finish off our festival. We took our blankets in droves and secured a spot in the park with everyone else to watch the show. When it finished, the festival ended and we carried the carnival prizes and flea market goods back to the car, piled in, and head back home. We invited friends to come back to our house, or join them at theirs while the masses cleared out of our tiny town. By the next day, everything was back to normal. Summer resumed its regular programming — lazy sunny days at the pool, fun at Indiana Beach, and nights at the drive-in or in the backyard around a bonfire.
The last few summers of high school is when I worked for Indiana Beach, running kiddy rides and running around the park for hours with my friends. Beach rats. We rode the skyline back and forth across the park, ate at the taco stand, played carnival games, and sought refuge from the humidity in the air conditioning of Dr. Frankenstein’s Castle. Each night, we took our time leaving the park, staying well past closing because it felt like it was our personal playground after the masses made their exit.
When I graduated high school, summers really took off. I took my first official “adult” road trip with my bestie Susanna to West Virginia to visit a friend. We sang songs from RENT and Moulin Rouge the entire way there and back. I worked at a local subdivision for our state’s Department of Transportation painting snowplow blades and mowing the property lots. At the end of that summer, I finally moved to the “big city” for college and officially left my hometown behind.
My dad used to say “the best thing about [our town] is looking at it through the rear-view mirror.” He too had been born and raised in our tiny town and I think he was happy to leave it behind by a certain point in his life. I didn’t realize it was for good at the time, but deep in my heart, I suppose I knew I would not return.
In my twenties, my summers got even better. But I had to get through a little bit of a rough patch before that was realized. Against my will, I was forced to move to Florida after dealing with a bad roommate. As much as I resented the fact I had to leave everything in my home state behind to go somewhere new, without knowing anyone except my mother and grandparents, it ended up being one of the best experiences of my younger years. I look back on that summer with much fondness, because it’s where I learned how to be my authentic self. I met a woman, Sheena, through work and ended up moving in with her and her family and had an incredible time with all of them. Her mom embraced me as one of her own and I will forever be thankful for her open arms and loving kindness when I needed it. Sheena helped me find my confidence and pushed me to embrace myself, flaws and all. I fell madly in love with my new friends that summer. Each of them made my heart flutter, in unique and platonic ways I never thought possible. I wish I had not lost touch with most of them over the years, but whenever I visit (though it’s very rare now) that small rural city in south-central Florida, I make a point to call anyone I can to pop in and say hello.
I also experienced my first hurricane (Charley in 2004) during that summer. It was nothing short of awful — no electricity for over a week in the height of summer (August humidity in Florida is a beast) is not for the faint of heart. Respect to the people who handle it year after year. My Ruby Tuesday family and I made the best of what’s around by hanging at our manager’s house — she kept us fed for days with the restaurant’s food that was in danger of expiring. We reopened a few days after the storm hit and were one of the only places in the community with air conditioning, so we were packed. We provided some comfort to the people who needed it the most by feeding them and keeping them cool. It was hard work, but fulfilling.
I moved back to Indiana as quickly as I could and was able to continue working for the same restaurant by transferring to a location near my dad’s city. I immediately began traveling with them to open new stores around the Midwest for a couple of years. I hit a wall working there and knew it was time to move on, so I found myself sitting in a booth at Texas Roadhouse for an interview with the general manager (who would later become a pal). This was the first restaurant in which I worked and I truly enjoyed being employed there, so it felt like a natural move to go back. That, and I had a few friends in the suburb I landed in after traveling for Ruby’s, which helped it feel like home pretty quickly.
Working for Roadhouse, I met a group of people who carried me through the majority of my twenties. The summers of 2005 through 2008 were spent with this core group of friends, despite most of us moving on from the restaurant by 2007. Before leaving that job, and in the few years that followed, we spent a wild amount of time together. Night after night, we slung steaks and cleaned up copious amounts of peanut shells. Then, it was time of nightcaps at a local bar or someone’s apartment for cocktails into the wee hours of the morning. We woke up around ten in the morning, went straight to the pool for the day, shower (or not), and do it all over again. Oh, the pool parties we had were epic! Sometimes, I don’t know how we made it to work in the late afternoons. Or how I remember them, if I’m being honest. We worked hard, played harder and man, it was fun. I wrote about the moments using prose and poetry in journals that are now sitting at the bottom of a box in storage.
Not only did we create memories that will forever be frozen in time, we forged bonds that will never be broken. We loved each other, some in more ways than one. Anyone who has worked in a restaurant understands the close-knit nature of the staff — we dated each other, broke each other’s hearts, and some of us found our soulmates (romantic or not).
Those summers taught me what I deserved when it came to love and friendship, especially after I fell for my closest guy pal. I spent an embarrassing amount of time chasing him even though I knew he wasn’t able to meet me where I was. Needless to say it never worked out, but we were able to maintain a friendship. I became a stronger woman because of it and knew I couldn’t settle for less when that chapter finally came to a close. In fact, I met my husband at the tail-end of what I now refer to as a “situationship.” Ultimately, I’m grateful for that journey — I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without that experience.
During those summers, I also realize I wanted more for my life. My close friends pushed me to write more, and when I decided to go back to school, they supported me. My best friend Diana and I studied for hours together with Law & Order SVU playing in the background. We helped each other prep for tests and stay focused, even when we were ready to give up. My first semester back was a success because of their help. Especially Diana’s. Those study nights saved me and pushed me to be better, and to eventually finish my degree. She still pushes me to be my best self today, by being my cheerleader and beta reader for my first novel. She continues to show me what sisterhood is after (she will hate that I am saying this) twenty years of best friendship.
Smack in the middle of those aforementioned years, I took my Dave Matthews Band obsession to the next level. I saw my first show in Cleveland with another bestie of mine, Becca (AKA Panda), and we spent the next several years following them around the Midwest. Just this past weekend, Becca and I went to see DMB at our local venue, Deer Creek, to celebrate our 18th (!!!!) year of seeing our favorite band together.
Becca and I spent some of our special DMB trips meeting up with friends we made through Twitter. If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you might remember me mentioning it in an older post on my blog (originally published by VINAzine) about how it’s totally normal to make friends online nowadays. If it wasn’t for that summer or the creation of Twitter (let’s give credit where it’s due), I may have never met some of the ladies who have become some of my closest friends today — like my pal Katie, who lives in Pittsburgh. Our friendship helped me get through this pandemic in so many ways and I will be forever grateful for how close we have come in the years we’ve known each other. We try to meet up at least once a year for DMB or Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls, which is one of her personal faves. She turned me into a major fan and I finally got to see them last summer with her. We’re getting together for them again this summer, at the end of August, and I couldn’t be more excited to jam with her!
Most of this post has been about happy memories of summers past, but it can’t be all rainbows, butterflies, and sunshine, right? Last summer was probably my most devastating and hardest to get through, due to losing my father to cancer. I will never stop missing him. Knowing I will never get over this loss, I am learning it will forever be a part of me. It’s painful, living with such a volume of melancholy and sadness. The grief is heavy, but I have learned to let the waves hit me when they want to hit me, roll with them. I know I’ll emerge from the crest again despite letting that tide pull me under.
Last summer taught me life is for the living, even if it sucks we won’t have the people we wish we had alongside us for the journey. I try hard to preserve the good memories and look back on them when I’m in the height of my sadness and grief. It helps, sometimes.
The summers now, in adulthood, just look and feel different. For one, I have a day job and only get the weekends off. It’s nice to have the stability (and I’m very happy I have it) but honestly, nothing compares to the weeks upon weeks of summer vacation. Taking a week or so off from work simply isn’t enough! I miss those lazy summers, when all I had to do was lounge by the pool or catch a concert. Probably mostly because in those early days, I didn’t have bills to pay.
I’m older now (with a lot more bills to pay), but hopefully I am a bit more wiser because of those experiences that fell between Memorial and Labor Days of the past. All the lessons I learned about life and myself, through relationships new and old, are cemented in the memories of the summers of my life. And for the new summer experiences to come in the years I have left, I welcome them with open arms. I look forward to creating more memories to look back upon fondly as I grow old.