Endless Summer

By Caitlyn Kennedy

I love summer. I love the feeling of being hot, I love lying on warm concrete, I love diving into cool water, I love the different fruits of the summer, the late nights and the long days on the beach.

I love how summer is completely carefree, no rules, no regulations, just freedom. Summer is enjoying yourself, summer is sleeping in and waking up to a bright room, with the sunlight streaming in through the gaps in the curtains. Summer is feeling the sun on your back and slathering on layer after layer of sunscreen. Summer is examining yourself in the mirror after a day out in the sun, and seeing tan lines where your bathers were. Summer is not having a clue what day it is, whether it’s a Friday or a Tuesday, and it doesn’t even matter and you don’t even care. Summer is hopping around barefoot, yelping when the hot sand burns your toes. Summer is when it’s 9 o’clock at night and it’s not even fully dark. Summer is endless.

Summer is the first swim of the season, which is always the best. Diving into the water, completely submerging yourself in its depths. One of the best feelings. Gliding along the bottom of the pool, with your arms outstretched and your eyes open. Having your hair loose and flowing around you, and then pulling yourself out of the water, to lie down on the warm concrete. Watching the water droplets on your skin slowly disappear as they are evaporated by the sun’s rays. Summer is the endless days at the beach, the smell of salt and sea and sunscreen, the sand stuck between your toes, the nail polish on your toes and fingers chipping away, having beach waves in your hair, the colourful striped towels on the sand, the sunglasses perched on top of your head. The beach, the pool, the water. There’s nothing better than the feeling of the sweat on your skin being replaced by the coolness of water.

Summer is those family barbeques which seem to happen every other day, the table groaning under the weight of potato salad, steaks and sausages, soft drinks for the kids, glasses, plates, paper napkins, and tomato sauce. You’re used to the smell of sausages sizzling away in the summer heat.  You get used to many things in the summer, waking up at whatever time you please also becomes  familiar. The beginning of school is a harsh wake up call.

Whenever I think back on summer, it just seems to be a blur. A blur of sweetness, of warmth, of good times and memories to look back on. Of mangoes, watermelons, pineapples, plums, the sweet summer fruits. The sweet juice of a peach trickling down your wrist, leaving it sticky and stained.  Those long, lazy days where you seem to do nothing, but lie in the sun, the feeling of contentment that seems to be with you all summer long. Sucking on ice cubes, drinking fruit smoothies, peeling off your clothes sticky with sweat and taking a cool shower.  Summer days are endless.

But when the heat of summer is at its very peak, and you’re sweaty and gasping and wishing for the coolness that winter brings, you’ll regret it. Because later on, when you’re rugged up and it’s raining and cold and icy and despite your layers and layers of clothing and scarves and gloves, you’re still freezing, you’ll look back on those long summer days and you’ll miss them. You’ll miss them because although summer may seem like it’s endless when it’s here, like everything else, it eventually moves on, making room for something new. But summer will always be back. It may take a while, but it comes around eventually.  But for now, here are the memories which summer has left me with.