I grew up in Louisiana, so summer, to me, means humidity, sweat, and mosquitoes. And recently that means killer mosquitoes in Louisiana, complete with West Nile Virus. Right now, I'm living in Japan, and I'm trying to gear up for the same routine. My summer memories are of finding ways to stay cool. (This summer, I'll be escaping to the UK.) When I was a child, my mother dropped us off at the community pool when it opened and picked us up when it closed. We were living in a small town in North Louisiana--Ringgold--and we knew everyone at the pool. Of course, these were the 1960s, so that meant "everyone" was white. As soon as integration hit this small, bigoted town, the pool closed rather than admitting blacks. We moved back to South Louisiana around that time, so I have no personal memories of dealing with the pool's closing, but I feel a general sense of loss for how poorly that town dealt with--and is still dealing with--racial integration.
And now I'll offer the terrifying grasp of the obvious: writing is such a process of discovery! When I began this, I thought I'd be talking about humidity, sweat, and killer mosquitoes. I wound up talking about racial tensions in a North Louisiana town. Who knew!
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Doesn't it seem ancient when parents could drop off kids at the pool and then pick them up when it closes? Tim's mom did exactly the same thing. And we spent the whole summer running around -we were limited how far we could go, but we basically went home for lunch, to pick up more toys, and when it got dark. That seems so weird now that we live in a world where backpacks and cell phones have GPS so we can always, in theory at least, know where our kids are. If we tried the swimming pool thing today, we'd probably be arrested for abandonment. Did anyone see that story about the mom who was fed up with her kids bickering in the back seat, so she made them get out of the car and walk home? She drove around the block, and then went back to check on them, and one child was missing. The kid was eventually found, but the mom was arrested. I have mixed feeling about that story, but in light of Jocelyn's story, but it doesn't seem out of the question that the mom was just doing something that her parents had done to her.
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I loved summer as a child; the last day of school was more exciting than Christmas. Our teacher would let us pick out a stack of dittos (yeah, I'm dating myself) that we could take home to work on, what was homework during the year became fun during the summer. I read, and read and read in the summer. I'd join the Summer Library Reading Club. I always took swim lessons and my friends and I would have daily "luncheons" which meant our Moms would fix us a tray of food and we would take it over to a different friend's porch or deck each day and sit and eat together. One summer my Mom taught us all how to knit, and that summer I must have made about a million knitted headbands. The concept of child saftery was so different, like you guys, we would ride our bikes everywhere and be gone for hours at a time. Every summer there was a week-long horse show held about 10 miles from my home and my Mom would drop my best friend Diane and I off at it each morning and then pick us up late in the afternoon- and we were all of about 8 or 9 years old at the time, would that happen today I wonder? Now that I'm working at a school, I've gotten back that old "It's Summer!" excitement. This week is graduation and next week the college will go into it summer hibernation...even though I still have to be here everyday to work, its a different slower tempo, relaxed and quiet. Ah summer.
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