Arkansas Summer Nostalgia

By Alisyn Reid

Nostalgia: the experience of existence as something sacred — memory that becomes holy as we drift further apart from the time remembered. Summer nostalgia is one of wonder alongside discomfort. The contrast between the hot air of a summer day and the cold chill of a frozen dessert; the sticky sweat of an evening walk as gardenia begins to bloom; the breathless awe of the Milky Way lighting up the sky above while swatting away mosquitoes  — it is both and all of it.

Childhood allows for curiosity and wonder in a way that adulthood masks much of the time. And so, when I am asked to consider summer nostalgia, the images are sharp and sure.

An evening standing in the road of a quiet neighborhood plucking honeysuckle blossoms to sip the nectar from the end — our parents occupied talking and playing music and us kids feeling marvelously unsupervised.

Standing on the porch watching fireflies duck in and around oak trees. Hearing the summer insects begin to sing in a chorus so familiar it lulls me to sleep.

Staining my mouth pink with red cream soda and then leaving the rest of it to get warm as I plunge back into the bath-warm lake water.

Cartoons playing in the hottest part of the afternoon. Zoning out on the couch after a morning of activity while putting aloe on a sunburn, despite the optimistic application of sunscreen.

Nights wandering through a rose garden on a property outside of town for a summer solstice celebration, complete with crawfish for everyone and cheap light beer for the adults.

Camping with my mothers and brother and setting up tents beneath clear skies, forgoing the rain-flies, only to wake in the middle of the night to a flash of lightning and a puddle of rain gathered on the sleeping bag (which was then unceremoniously dumped into an open suitcase upon rousing). Laughing while damp in a starkly lit campground bathroom. 

Sleeping on a pad in a home in Huntsville, Arkansas, and waking up to pancakes and funny stories in the clutter of an old woman’s longtime home. Sliding down the grassy slopes with the family boys until it’s time to swim in the creek beneath the limestone bluffs.

Loading up and driving — unplanned — to Leachville, Arkansas, to watch my father kneel tearfully in front of his mother’s grave and tell her he had become a father, and he was sorry he hadn’t come sooner.

There are certain moments that you do not forget, including some that seem as mundane as anything. One warm afternoon in the summer of my 28th year, I stood before a honeysuckle bush with the man I had just started dating and said to him, “I think I’ll remember this exact moment for the rest of my life.”

We have since married and reproduced, and I am finding that old summer nostalgia becoming more palpable as I watch my little one come into childhood. What moments will stay with her, I wonder? What will she know of bath-warm lakes, of night-blooming jasmine, of melting ice cream and condensation on the windows? What will she remember of running through the woods and poison ivy, of music in the hazy golden evenings, of bug spray and sunscreen and blue popsicles?

What will stay with her of her mother’s humanity, of love fiercely endowed and generationally bestowed, of that journey from disowning an ever-present sensitivity to rediscovering the awe of vulnerability?

I watch my daughter pick dandelions and disperse the fluff into the wind, and I wonder what her wish would be, if she had one.

Mine is a wish that she might always know summer as a time of exploration and remembering what it is to know sunlight. To know discomfort as a temporary experience that cannot dim the light of just being here. That beauty can be found in any season just as well as heartache. That the things that made childhood curious and delightful may not always be found in the same old places, but the possibility of childlike presence remains. Life feels long sometimes, but with less than a hundred summers a most likely outcome, one begins to recenter the reality of time passing whether heeded or not. Summer nostalgia is a reminder that it is wise to stay here for what comes — bug-bitten or not.

Happy summer.