August 31, 2003
Summer Nights
An On Display collaboration
This month's On Display topic is "Summer Nights".
What a delicious feeling do the words "summer nights" invoke. They immediately recall to me being home at Grandma's house in Maine. Fireflies, frogs chirping in the pond, whippoorwills in the poplar across the street. Dew on freshly cut grass, immediately tracked in on bare feet. Quiet conversations in the screenhouse, sipping iced tea after supper. Laying in the front yard staring up at the blanketing stars and vivid Milky Way. Bedroom windows open to catch the breezes stirring the filmy curtains. Light on the horizon until almost 10:00 at night. Reading by the little pool of light my bedside lamp provided, until 2:00 in the morning.
The first feeling of quiet is replaced with the realization of the riot of sounds happening outside. Frogs. Crickets. Nocturnal birds. Cars passing over the wooden bridge a quarter-mile away. The train, at 10:00 and 2:00. Grandma snoring away in the bedroom beside mine. The cuckoo clock announcing the half-hour and hour, and it's muffled tock-tock...tock-tock...tock-tock... My golden retriever erupting into a fury of ear-scratching at the foot of my bed, tags jangling on her collar. The squeal of a rabbit becoming some owl's dinner, out in the woods behind the house. The cat announcing a catch of his own, in that particular guttural yowl of his.
Even after a hot, humid day, there's a certain crispness to the air after the sun goes down. Like you can take a breath and keep on breathing in for hours. I used to love sitting close to my screened window, looking across the fields in front of Grandma's house at the waist-high mist hovering like smoke in the moonlight. I'd practically press my lips against the mesh and breathe as deeply as I could. Many nights I lay awake propped up on pillows fighting with my lungs and trying to get them to behave themselves. Being asthmatic, the cool night air was usually very soothing - even though sucking in the pollen was what was freaking my lungs out to begin with.
Quiet and solitude is what I remember most about summer nights when I was growing up. Alone, but not lonely. The occasional sleepover that I had with my friends was all well and good, but I always preferred listening to the hum of life outside my window, rather than the giggles of my girlfriends. They wanted to stay up all night watching TV, or keep all the lights on in the bedroom as they talked about boys and drew pictures of horses and listened to Bon Jovi tapes. As much as I looked forward to them coming for the weekend or a few days during summer vacation, I didn't mind so much when I had the nights to myself again.
I loved it when I would wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to go back to sleep. On a few occasions I slipped out the back door with my dog, careful not to wake my Grandmother - and careful to step around whatever critter offering my cat left on the steps. We'd slip down the dirt road in the dark and turn left into the neighbor's fields. We'd wade through the damp, shoulder-high grass, and sometimes I'd lie down in it and become cocooned in a moving, weaving universe of my own. My dog would come and go, chasing scents and nocturnal creatures. I don't remember ever being afraid being out there in the dark, by myself. Mostly, I just worried that the dog would scare up a porcupine.
I think nighttime was my favorite time, during those perfect summers. I vividly remember celebrating how incredibly lucky I was to grow up in such a place, where my heart was full of joy. I knew enough, during my childhood, how important it was to cherish that time in my life. Those long, dark evenings are where my spirit retreats back to when I need a place of comfort. That place, that time, that peace is what I'm homesick for every day that I live.
 
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