Whirlpools

This is for you Kristin:
hotttttttttttttttttttt . . ..
oh my gosh . . .here it comes . . .

My favorite summertime movie probably has to be Pollyanna, starring Haley Mills. My mother loves Haley Mills, and each Thanksgiving, my mom would, the night before the big holiday, watch the three Haley Mills films that we knew to be in existence, all the while ripping up shards of bread to make her homemade stuffing. I have no idea what Haley Mills has to do with Thanksgiving, and my love for Pollyanna as a favorite summertime flick has nothing to do with memories of Thanksgiving. I digress.

In Pollyanna, we are treated to an old fashioned southern summertime community—the way I dream of summer being: tall oak trees that grow right outside your bedroom window that you can climb down to sneak out at night (but not break your pelvis, like Pollyanna did), watermelon eating contests, sticky sweet iced tea, men in seersucker suits with straw hats, homemade fishing rods and iridescent bluegill sunfish, and people who strolled the lanes right before sunset. That is my favorite—one of the great things about the road on which we live is its “side-streetedness,” which beckons couples and families young and old to emerge from air conditioned bedrooms and naturally cooled basements to get their first breath of fresh air as they walk, ever so slowly, down the road; its like a bond we share: we survived another oppressive day, and we’re here to show it.

I like Pollyanna because it is a testament to how summertime belongs to the young—and I’m fine with that because I hate summer. But I loved it when I was a kid, and I look forward to summertime with Callum, and I’m happy I’ll be home to enjoy it with him. I won’t work during the summer (unless I have to), because I don’t want to miss out on times of wonder and intrigue. One of my favorite parts of going back to school at the end of August is seeing kids who have undergone remarkable transformations over the past twelve weeks or so—many times it surprises the heck out of me. Summertime, for the young, is a time for self-discovery, a time to refine the lifestyle nuances for which we all crave: music, film, dress, food. It’s a time when small moments happen between young people that, although life altering to the them, seem syruply tacky to us adults (kisses, breakups, make-ups)—maybe because, after all, we’re SO mature and responsible now. Or maybe we’ve just lost our abilities to know magic when we see it. If you haven’t read DANDELION WINE by Ray Bradbury, and you want to experience the magic of a childhood summer, go out and buy a copy. And I dare you not to cry.

Its funny: I can remember just about every summer up until about my 16th birthday, and then everything seemed to become rote. Actually, I do remember my college summers, so I lied. But that’s a different blog. But I’m talking about the magical, dirty-handed-if-you-want-me-inside-for-a-bath-you’ll-have-to tranquilize-me first kinds of summers. How many of us were perfectly complacent to just “ride bikes” all day. Every day. And be overjoyed at the prospect of waking up tomorrow to ride bikes again. Richie Schiffer and I, after freshmen year of high school, spent just about every day at Borderland State Park, riding the trails on our piece of crap bikes—and I had to ride eight miles to his house first, BEFORE getting to Borderland.

Or there was my “summer of chess,” when, after 4th grade ended, my friend Mike Murphy and I found ourselves virtually addicted to chess, since Mrs. Swieca, our teacher, taught the class how to play before the year ended. I remember Maureen, Mike’s mom, asking us if we wanted to go outside and play catch or something, since it was so nice out. Chess: the great incentivizer to stay inside, if only for a few hours a day. And then, the next year, my best friend in the world Michael Murphy transferred to a private school, and I got my first taste of a real-life letdown, and the realization that things were about the change continually over the next few years. I didn’t talk to Mike much after that. I got so into chess that summer that, while at the Westgate mall one Saturday, my Papa Goldsmith decided he wanted to buy me my very own chess set. But instead of buying me the cheap Milton Bradley set at Bradlees, we went into a Brookstone type of place, and he spent almost 70 dollars on a mahogany chess set for me. I remember my mom being very upset: what the hell is a 4th grader doing with a 70 dollar chess set?? But I still have it. From my summer of chess.

There were kiddy-pools filled with achingly cold hose water (which, one time, my Nana Goldsmith infuriated my mom by constantly dipping my “little slugger” hat into the water, and then putting back on my head), Slip-and Slides, Wet Banana’s (and NO, those are not the names of the films Timmy made with his girlfriends), Pogo Balls, skip-its, sidewalk chalk, sandboxes (in which, along with Mike Gryniuk, I used to make roads and highway systems—Mike Gryniuk now does this for a living), treehouses with terrible ventilation systems (because, basically, they were wooden boxes), Hermit crab huntings, swimming pool whirlpool making events where, after, we tried swimming against the current (there’s a poem waiting to be written) “waffle” haircuts, wiffleballs, cap guns (the plastic ring ones that worked, and the shitty paper roll ones that were cheaper), dirty faces, the smell of Avon “Skin-So-Soft” (because someone made up the rumor that it worked to ward off mosquitoes), the feeling that, somehow, staying OUTSIDE past NINE was “living dangerously,” and, of course, the archetypal figure of my childhood summers: the clown sprinkler. The “clown” was just that—a creepy looking clown face where the hose was connected to the back of his neck, and water shot up out of his head; he came with a plastic cone-type hat that, if positioned correctly, rode the stream of water about 15 or 20 feet high, and gyrated up there atop a jet of water. Very cool indeed.

Right now, as I write this, its approaching 11p.m., and I can hear, over the monitor, the sounds of Callum, upstairs, in his bassinette, crying and fussing because he’s so overtired; we think the heat does this to him. I wonder why he won’t go to sleep. And I wonder how any kid (Callum is a [very little] kid, after all) could possibly cry during the summer. I’m emotional thinking about how, in two or three short years, he’ll start living his summers like he should. Like all kids should. And he’ll make for himself those magical summer memories that I bet we all wish we could sometimes live again.