The Summers of my Childhood

I sense a slight shift in the air. It is still hot but the season is fast burning itself out. In two weeks summer will be officially over. The weather will start to break and cooler winds will soon start to blow in. In three weeks the schools will re-open for another scholastic year, the beaches will empty and all that will be left are echoes of laughter, shadows of a season past…

Summer has always been a season of nostalgia for me since I finished college. I recall my childhood days spent playing hide and seek or hopscotch with my friends until the sun went down. Those were the days when I never tired, when there weren’t enough hours in a day for our little adventures. They were days of lazy afternoons playing on golden sand and cooling off in the deep blue sea. Computers were unheard of. All our games were about imaginary heroes. There was less cars, less pollution and a magical aura seemed to hang in the air. Every nook and cranny held a mystery of our own making. Fairies lived in the carob groves and the valleys were peopled by giants and brave knights. Like all children, we searched for an explanation for everything. And when none was forthcoming, we made up our own. In our imagination the early summer fields of red clover were battlefields running with blood. Every small noise in the dry grass was a dragon lurking in the shadows. Every bird that flew was a mighty eagle ready to take us for a ride on its wings. We were friends with the butterflies and, like them, sucked on the nectar of the honeysuckles. Life was innocent. Life was sweet. There were no phantoms lurking in corners; no monsters under our bed. If there were any ghosts, they were friendly ones and angels of radiance surrounded us. They were days of sunshine, of laughter, of fun, of innocence – the summer days of my childhood.

Looking back it seems to me as if my childhood summers were like golden moments in my life that passed way too quickly. Sometimes I wish that I could turn back the clock and re-live one of those summer evenings spent staring at the sky, watching the moon rising and the stars come out; to play a game of hide and seek that went on for hours and to eat peaches straight off of the tree. Those were the days when time was not a commodity because I had so much of it; so much of it, in fact, that I was bored of all the free time wishing I would soon grow up to be able to do other things. And, alas, here I am now, with not enough hours in a day and wishing that I could have back just one childhood summer day.