Summer Stardust
If there is one time in my life that can bring a distant, dreamy look to my face, with my mind obviously in another place, it's when I remember my wonderfully playful and frolicking childhood summers. The one that stands out most is the summer I spent with my best friend at her family's lake cottage before our tenth-grade year. Though it happened decades ago, my memories are so richly textured and colored that those sunny days and warm nights could have been yesterday.
In case you are wondering if the best summer of my life includes a romance, let's just say that I would never disappoint you by omitting a love story from any tale—much less one that epitomizes the essence of summer.
But before I get to the romance, I want to spend some time on that dreamy look many of us get when looking back on the sweet summers of our lives. That soft gaze comes with memories of freedom and expansiveness, our senses fully indulged, and light that lingers and plays with shadow into dusk's late arrival. The buoyancy of July days that float along like fireflies, charming, nonlinear, for but a fleeting time. I am enamored with that sense of weightlessness, that free and easy feeling I felt at the lake. I was joined at the hip with my best friend in the whole wide world, not quite knowing where she ended and I began. And a budding romance with a boy was written into the stars that August. Sometimes, I want to hold onto the unworried feeling of that summer, grasping for a lightness that always seems just out of reach in adulthood. With that wistful stare, I'm remembering, indulging all over again in sun-drenched moments from long ago.
Doesn't summer hold this vision for many of us? Vibrant colors, long days, verdant backdrops to picnics and barbecues, children running wild with no shoes and no cares. Fruits and vegetables bursting from gardens and roadside stands, tables laden with earth's bounty. In the tradition of the Four Shields, drawn from the wisdom of many ancient peoples, each of the four seasons represents a distinct stage of human development. Summer is the season of the child—playful, curious, and energetic. It’s the season of abundance and discovery, and our enchantment with its offerings is undeniable. Sometimes, I pity the seasons not as favored, whose finest qualities are overlooked in comparison to the nostalgia of childhood summers of freedom.
As for my summer of freedom, it came on the heels of a year of living in France with my family. We had returned home to Canada, and by some heavenly grace, I was invited to spend the end of summer break with my best friend, Megan. This meant a whole month living with her family at their Victoria Beach cottage, located on Lake Winnipeg. After a year apart, she and I had only grown closer, having written a novel’s worth of letters to one another. It was 1991—the era of cost-prohibitive long-distance phone calls—so letters were our primary means of communication about the trials and tribulations of our 9th-grade year apart. She had her first kiss, which she wrote about in painstaking detail, but I only got to read about it a month later, when her letter arrived. Now, we would be able to talk in real-time about all the monumental things happening in our lives, like French kissing.
Victoria Beach, commonly referred to as "VB" by locals, is a village-like community situated on the southern end of Lake Winnipeg. It's loosely organized by a grid of dirt roads dotted with cottages tucked into the trees. During the summer season, cottage owners leave their cars in a grassy parking lot at the entrance to the idyllic enclave. Once inside VB, there are no cars, only totally beaten-up “beach bikes.” Beach bikes are worn-out bikes that had previous lives in the city but have been retired to a second life at the lake. Many don't have breaks, are stuck in one particular gear, rattle, squeak, and never really fit their riders well. VB and its collection of 1930s and 40s cottages are frozen in time with clotheslines, kitchen shelves full of chipped, mismatched antique dishes, and no dishwashers. Everything is slower at VB, the vibe offering a particular kind of throw-back heaven for its lucky inhabitants.
Over the years, I had been invited to the cottage and spent weekends here and there with Megan and her family. Now that we were in high school, it would be a decidedly different experience. There isn't much to do at VB for teenagers, so we would join the ranks of the other teens who walked up and down 15th Avenue at night. Think of walking on 15th Avenue sort of like cruising, just without the car. I will never know why walking 15th Avenue, a dirt road just like all the other roads, became the cool thing to do—but we did it. After a day on the lake, Megan and I would take turns in the outdoor cedar shower (the original pre-war cottage construction did not include an indoor shower), put on our cutoff shorts, tank tops, and frosty lipstick, and head out for the night. That first night, we felt invincible. I don't think we walked; we strutted. What, exactly, was happening on 15th Avenue? Nothing. Nothing at all, but just being there was enough to make us feel like we had arrived.
That summer, her parents and grandmother slept in the main cottage, and we shared the bunk house with her two brothers, boys on one side and girls on the other. Our side of the bunkhouse was tiny, with barely enough room for two single beds, an ancient painted dresser, and an old TV on the top shelf of a small, open closet. At night, we would pile into the rustic space with Megan's older brother, Tom, and his best friend, Brad, watching Cheers before bed. To this day, I cannot hear the theme song from Cheers without being whisked back to those muggy nights in the bunkhouse.
If you caught the introduction of the older brother's best friend—you must have a keen sense for romantic plots. I’d had a crush on Brad since the moment I met him years earlier, pining after him all through middle school. However, being the friend of his best friend's little sister meant I was basically invisible. His family had a cottage across the way, and the kids had all grown up spending summers together. Brad was merciless to Megan when they were younger, always teasing and taunting her, treating her like the little sister he never had. Nevertheless, I thought the sun rose and set in his eyes. Even during the year I lived in France, I dreamed about him. Much to my embarrassment, I wrote him an elated love letter while abroad. How mortifying. Now, here I was, in a cottage across the road from him and seeing him every day. In fact, he was five inches away from me on the floor of the bunkhouse, watching late-night TV. Was this really my life?
Sigh. Swoon.
In middle school, he wanted nothing to do with me. Now, with my braces off, spiral perm finally grown out, and a year of living abroad under my belt, I had grown up and suddenly become visible. Throughout morning babysitting jobs, afternoons on the beach, and swimming in the frigid lake, Megan and I gossiped about Brad. We spent hours dissecting his every action, and what would happen if he actually, finally, at long last, liked me back.
Brad's family had a boat, and the four of us spent whole days out on the water together. We would motor across the enormous lake, pulling up on empty beaches to eat our PB&J sandwiches and explore. Our days played out like scenes from one of those 1980s teen movies—no adults hovering around, total freedom, and the sense that we would go on forever in this blissful self-governance.
Megan and I spent every moment together. She and I would talk into the wee hours of the night—the passing weeks were nothing more than a marathon sleepover. Together, elbow to elbow, we helped clean up after family meals, hand-washing and drying dishes in the cramped kitchen. We babysat together, biked all over the place, read books lying side by side on the beach, swam, learned to sail, and spent evenings sitting outside with her family, chewing on sunflower seeds and chatting. When I think of the two of us back then, I can only think of laughter and talking. So much talking. I don't think I spoke to my parents once the entire time I was there. I had all I needed—my best friend, the lake, and a boy I thought I might explode over.
One day, that boy finally asked if I wanted to walk down to the beach with him to watch the sunset. I still get butterflies remembering the butterflies of that moment. The boy I had had a crush on for four years was asking to spend time alone with me. Yes, I would like that very much.
As we walked through thick vegetation on a narrow path down to the beach, he reached for my hand. I thought I might die. Literally, right there on the path, just lay me down. I have lived all the life I need. This can be it for me.
On the bluff overlooking the lake, there were several other people gathered, young and old, to watch the sunset. Brad knew all the faces, and we joined the crowd, mingling while the sky darkened around us. Eventually, the others left, and there we were, standing close enough that I could feel the warmth from his body. Under a starry sky, the water glistening below, a light breeze cooling off the heat of the day, he bent down and kissed me—my first kiss.
When I got back to the bunkhouse and pushed the screen door open, utterly unaware of its recurrent creek in my enthralled state, Megan was waiting for me. I could barely speak—electricity still running through my body. This was happening, and my life was perfect. My best friend, the lake, and the boy. There was nothing I could change to make it better.
I wonder if I can ever have a summer like that again. Is it possible to feel that free and unencumbered in adulthood? That full of possibility? I experience moments of pure carefree enjoyment now, but only in sips—not in seemingly boundless swaths of time, sunlight and joy stretching into the ether. I feel an unwelcome doubt that summer can come again with the same purity of experience as it did when I was a kid. I don't feel this way about the other seasons. As an adult, I can recreate the magic of the Christmas holidays, experiencing fulfillment and wonder with potency. But the essence of summer seems less attainable now, the responsibilities of adulthood tamping down the barefoot freedom of youth. Is it possible that something about the magic of summer changes with age and becomes less available? As adults, there can be a lovely afternoon, outing, or moment, but rarely an entire carefree summer.
Just north of Boulder, there is a small town I like to visit in July and August. There, a river runs along the base of a towering rock face, carving out a meandering flow of fresh mountain water right through town. A city park was built with this river as its focal point, complete with a watering hole where you can scamper up the side of an enormous boulder and jump into the natural pool of water below. From there, you can float on a tube down the river, and I've often noticed there are a lot fewer adults than kids tubing. You will not find me sitting under a tree reading—I spend as much time on the river as my kids. I love it and long for days in that place, which perplexes my kids and my friends. In their eyes, it's pleasant but not that special. But it's that feeling, the one adults only get in small tastes, that I crave and gobble up every sunny afternoon I spend bumping down the rapids in my tube. I squeal over every big wave, complain with a grin on my face when my butt hits a rock, and eagerly get out of the rapids and head back up to the watering hole to float down the river all over again—just like a kid. Playful and unencumbered by anything real or hard. I don't think about the things I'm responsible for. As I float, time floats too. It's only for a day, not a whole summer, but as adults, we have to take what we can get and relish it while it lasts.
When I have that distant, dreamy look on my face and am reaching back into memory, reliving summers past, my feelings are complex. I feel delight and wistfulness, but also something that isn't quite grief, though it tugs at me in the same way. A pull of longing tinged with sadness that once felt is forever recognizable, missing something that has vanished and can only be revisited in memory. However, instead of frantically trying to recreate that unending sense of possibility from childhood summers, the counterbalance in adulthood lies in consciously creating time that isn't planned or structured. This isn't about replicating childhood but about finding the closest adult approximation: moments with no deadlines, no rigid bookends, just time unfurling as it will. It's in these pockets of unplanned, unhurried time that we taste summer's essence once again—that potent blend of liberation and joy. This approach allows us to be adults in summer from a place of acceptance. By acknowledging that the purest form of summer belongs to children, we release ourselves from the futile struggle for a way of being that is no longer available. This means tolerating the idea that the most authentic expression of summer lives at one stage of life and not necessarily throughout our lifespan.
What would it be like to let summer belong to childhood?
Acceptance shifts our expectations, enabling us to live in flow with what is genuinely possible in maturity, and to find peace, a different kind of freedom during the warm, light-filled months. Acknowledging that the pure, carefree nature of summer's essence will largely be revisited in memory makes space for something less pressure-filled in adulthood. It's a way of being in harmony with the natural progression of life rather than resisting it.
When I think back to that blissful bubble of time with Megan so long ago, there is a magical glow to all my memories. They are awash in late-afternoon sunlight, particles of dust floating through the air, a golden hue, evanescent yet still glimmering in my heart today. I remember lying on a surfboard at midnight with my best friend, our heads touching, our bodies outstretched in opposite directions, staring up at the twinkling sky, looking for shooting stars, and finding them. Finding them, finding them, finding them. Their magic sprinkling down over our young hearts, leaving stardust that remains.
Enjoy the slow- Heather