Summer nostalgia
I remember summers as a kid. It’s almost entirely sense memory now, with only a few clear snapshots of actual events or experiences left intact. I remember the feel of my bare feet on hot pavement, the cool splash of pool water, playing in the street into the evening (we lived on a cul-de-sac), the warm breeze that rolled up the hill we lived on.
Even just a few extra degrees of warmth this past week kicked all of those memories awake again.
Summer happens every year, so it’s not exactly summer itself that I feel nostalgic for (although I do love the long days, temperate weather, and ample excuses to spend more time outside). It’s the feeling of life in summer, way back then, that I miss with that particular kind of sweet longing.
The stakes felt so wonderfully small.
Would the ice cream truck FINALLY come down my street? Would I get to have my birthday party at the waterslide park? Would the towering stack of books I devoured win the summer reading contest at the library?
Life felt easy. Or maybe more accurately: it felt all about the present.
I think that’s part of what changes as we grow up. As kids, we haven’t yet built all the stories about what things mean. We haven’t learned to anticipate every possible outcome, to optimize every decision, to turn uncertainty into worry. Challenges are just things to try, to test, to figure out as we go.
Somewhere along the way, many of us stop experiencing life and start managing it.
This summer, I want to lean back toward that childhood essence a little more — the part that is curious instead of cautious, present instead of preoccupied. The part that doesn’t need every experience to be productive or meaningful in order to enjoy it.
Maybe that’s what nostalgia is really pointing us toward anyway.
Not a longing to go backward — but a reminder of a way of being we’d like to feel again.
