how to have the best summer

“I suspect that the way I feel now, at summer’s end, is about how I’ll feel at the end of my life, assuming I have time and mind enough to reflect: bewildered by how unexpectedly everything turned out, regretful about all the things I didn’t get around to, clutching the handful of friends and funny stories I’ve amassed, and wondering where it all went. And I’ll probably still be evading the same truth I’m evading now: that the life I ended up with, much as I complain about it, was pretty much the one I chose. And my dissatisfactions with it are really with my own character, with my hesitation and timidity.”– Tim Kreider, The Summer that Never Was

Last summer was one of those golden summers that nobody ever actually has. Without contest, it was the best and the fullest of my adult life. (I’d say of my whole life, but there was a summer, when me, my mom, and my brother spent seven weeks lakeside, and the sun turned me blonde).

When I was fifteen, I was on the phone with a friend the week before Labor Day. Already, the days were shortening, and the dew forming on the grass made my feet cold. I sat on the steps of my deck, as far as our cordless phone’s signal could reach, and we talked about how summer never is what it’s supposed to be. Nine months later, when school let out and summer started again, this same friend made a list of all the things we were going to do that summer. I can still see the list, but I don’t think we ever crossed a item off it.

By some karmic jackpot, my summer last year was that summer I always hoped I’d have at least once. Each day came to me like magic. I went to baseball games on weekday afternoons. I spent blissed out weeks on a porch, watching the sun set over the rooftops, too hot to do anything but listen to The Weeknd and drink wine. One Saturday, I woke up so early that I met the woman I was living with coming home from her night shift. She had a drink, I had coffee. That day, I drove south, and we saw the sun split itself into a thousand beans as it passed the horizon line, and then that night, I stayed out until two, and ran home in the rain.

I stayed out past midnight again, and again, and again. I walked home under the stars after spending hours with people I’d just met. I spent so much time getting to know strangers, because I was losing friends that mattered to me, and I didn’t know how to recover the pieces. Deep into July, I laid under the sun, and listened to elementary schoolmates, now grown, play basketball. I was shattered, in that warm grass, to think about how often all my friends have been new friends, and how very, very rarely they’ve become old ones.

I turned twenty-five, and spent the night before my birthday, a Saturday night, alone in an apartment cluttered with moving boxes, feeling too young to be this lonely and too old to care about the next day. I lost twenty pounds from stress. I walked hand in hand along the shore of Lake Superior, and remembered that our constants can take many forms.

After two strong margaritas, I watched Fourth of July fireworks set off over a baseball diamond. Their exploding light against the navy sky was so violent and beautiful that I cried. Again, and again, and again, I lifted out of body, and wondered what it was I did to get to access so much joy. I went to Italy. Swam in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Cried in the Basilica of Santa Maria. Threw a coin into the Trevi fountain, because the first time I did it, my wish came true. When I got home, I slept for three hours, and woke up and went to a nightclub. Last summer, I fell in love.

–

This summer will be, for every reason there is, different from last. I’m fighting my natural tendency to believe that different will mean worse. Last summer was bottled lightning. It was wild in its intensity, and shocking how much life I experienced during that short season. It was wild in the way it all surprised me.

For important reasons, this summer is calculated. I’ve done something I’ve rarely done as an adult, and made a list of all the things I want to do. I’m plotting out weeks (and more importantly, weekends) to maximize time. I’m building calendars based on priorities. Sometimes, this is what you have to do. Time is sometimes an ocean and sometimes a math equation. Yesterday, my boyfriend said to “we won’t be in town for a single Thursday Saint’s home game.” No dollar beer night this summer.

–

I think about how yoga teaches us to find space within our bodies. This summer feels a little bit like that, learning how to find space, to be at peace, to do all it is we want — and need — to do.

I supposed this is all my way of saying: here’s to a new season. One of the hardest thing I’ve had to confront is how I assume scarcity in the face of abundance. Last summer, we never ran out of time, out of sun, out of day, out of wonder. This summer won’t be like that. Already, the days feel finite. But why does that have to make them any less precious?