Summer Solstice, Past and Present

I used to rise early during the Summer Solstice. Every morning, around eight o’clock, I would wake up and tip-toe down the stairs of my family home. I felt the cool, wooden floors on my feet knowing that scorching concrete was just a few feet away. I started my days with a quietly-concocted bowl of cereal, cooling and sweet.

The sun was my best friend during the Summer Solstice. I was born in his season. I let his light embrace my skin, warming it until the sweat tickled my neck. It was the longest day of the year, and the sun didn’t let me forget. Together, we would collect cattails and put them in my hair. We made relaxed laps around solitary ponds, leaped over chirping creeks, and skipped stones behind cricket-dense thickets, trying not to hit any fish. We climbed trees, ignoring the sharp bark scraping against my hands and knees. We reclined in treetops, hearing the robins and mourning doves sing while we played with the clouds.

Every now and then, we stopped and fawned over how the grass stained my feet green. It’s as if the moss-filled woods and verdant meadows of Ohio were using me as their canvas. Wildberries splashed onto my pinafore dresses. Dandelions tinted my fingers, with lupine trying to follow suit. The sun and I relished in summer’s paradoxical perfume—herbaceous, heady, yet still refreshing.

Even during the Summer Solstice, the sun must bid goodbye. We spent our last few hours together chasing fireflies under a blanket of evening blue. We lit bonfires in fields and danced around them with friends, thinking we were just like the pretty women in our school storybooks.

I welcomed the moon by eating my mother’s spices and curries in my backyard. She and her court of stars would glisten and laugh every time I arrogantly took a bite out of a pepper. She lovingly wrapped dew on my shoulders and thighs, beginning to tuck me to bed as the night came to a close.

I slept well on the Summer Solstice.

And I still do.