Summer

Simple Days

16 months old with my beautiful Mama

According to Meister Eckhart, the German philosopher, “the soul evolves not by addition but by subtraction.” I sure hope you’re right, Meister because I’ve had a lot erased. I hope my soul evolves into a fruitful bounty, rid of the envy when I hear of friends tending to their lives without having to scan and upload documents from every corner of their lives. Or traveling, taking trips while I crawl over dead bodies and rotting corpses in low, ugly places, my knees covered in blood. I wish I were a bird or a tree or a bird in a tree. Instead, I am a shadow with a permanent punch to the gut. Where is the summer promised to me, the summer I used to have, the trips to see my cousins in Ohio and Kentucky, chasing fireflies while my mother and aunt and grandmother sat around the dining table smoking Pall Malls and drinking pots of Yuban coffee into the wee hours playing Yahtzee. The sound of the dice rattling in the little brown cup would lull me to sleep. My days were spent chasing my cousin Billy Ray or riding bikes barefoot up and down Neva Drive, cooling off with sweet tea and popsicles. It was perfect. Potatoe pancakes and fried chicken, sliced tomatoes and peppers from my grandmother’s garden, root beer in big plastic tumblers with lots of ice, and getting to stay up late and sleeping next to my mom. When my stepfather went to Montana for a month each summer, I got to sleep with my mom. What that really meant was I could watch as many scary shows as possible on TV because now I wasn’t alone terrified in my bedroom. I could watch Night Gallery and the Twilight Zone without fearing Rod Serling would step out of my closet, or the person behind the voice of the Outer Limits would jump out of the TV and force me not to adjust the dial. But my greatest chill came when Alfred Hitchcock walked onto a simple set, in black and white, and in profile stepped into his silhouette and turned to the camera and in his mellifluous British accent said, “Good Evening.” A small Sony television sat on top of a Spanish dresser in my mother’s bedroom, its silver antennas making it look bug like and alien. My mother sat next to me in bed, propped up with a few pillows behind her back against a carved wooden headboard reading “Airport” by Arthur Hailey. Her pastel negligee was ruffled at the sleeve, and a gold chain around her long neck glistened in the glow of the bedroom lamp. A faint scent of her perfume, Opium, still lingered long after she dabbed it on her wrists. “This one looks creepy,” I said. My mother was lost in her book. That summertime slowed and I could stare at things. I didn’t try to be pretty or have big ideas. I didn’t worry, or ache or have a temper or yell. I didn’t carry a kitchen knife in my dead-cat belly or a rotting eggshell inside my womb. I swayed in the breeze like the Sycamore outside my window. It was enough. I don’t want to be afraid or hate anymore. I just want to eat enchiladas and get drunk. I want summer back.