Summer diaries

Another sweet season comes to a close.

It’s noon in Philadelphia and I’m eating the best piece of fruit I’ve eaten all summer. I’m leaning out the passenger seat of Nora’s Prius, savoring a syrupy nectarine that was pressed into my hand as we packed up for the drive. It’s 95 degrees and humid. This heat has been nauseating since I arrived, but right now, it feels like a greenhouse, succulent and calming. Juice drips down my wrist, slides down my calf. Nora waves from up on her balcony, watering her plants while a coruscating mist sprays off her deck onto the sidewalk in front of me. It evaporates almost instantly.

…

It’s nine in the morning next to Union Station. I’m steadying myself on the bus that I’m taking to the Supreme Court. A man sitting across from me reaches into a large black trash bag that he’s carried with him since he boarded. He pulls out a blue and grey striped tie, lifting it up so the people in the back can see it. “Does anyone know how to tie a tie?” he calls out.

Small smiles, averted eyes. No one says anything. He asks again. I think about how I should learn how to tie a tie.

A woman towards the front gets up from her seat, sighing, more amused than exasperated. “I do.”

The man smiles, sits up a little straighter. “I have an interview today,” he tells her proudly. She loops the tie around his neck and loosely ties the knot. I wonder how many people she’s tied them for, and who she thinks of right now. For ten seconds, we watch two people who happened to board the same bus, one man on the cusp of a new beginning and a woman whose handiwork led her to have a “blessed day,” according to the man whose day she’d just made.

…

It’s 10:30 at night in Bloomingdale and I hear the rain before I see it. I’m perched on the front stoop while fat, slow drops polka-dot my shirt. Summer rain during the second-warmest June on record. It’s not a storm as much as a reprieve from the day, as if the sky extends an olive branch in exchange for the unrelenting heat. I take longer inhales of the damp air and the person I am in love with joins me on the stoop. I rest my head on his shoulder. Without speaking, I know we are both thinking about how lucky we are to watch soft rain instead of a storm. We’ve seen many of those over the last four years. 

I don’t know it then, but I’m a week away from quitting my job. 

…

It’s two in the afternoon in Los Angeles. My shoulders are sore and I’m leaning back in the wicker chair under the umbrella. I have three companions in the shade, all of whom I’ve met two hours before arriving at the local community garden: Rahim, who told me he’s going through a divorce and working in the garden has been helping him cope (“it’s about quite literally getting back to your roots,” he tells me). Dale, who is soft-spoken and studying psych in college. And Helen, the older woman who started the garden for the local high school decades ago. We’ve each finished a three-hour shift in the sun and Rahim says he wishes there was a pool in the garden. I think about the range in age between the four of us. It’s a Saturday in late July and we’re talking about zucchini bread and the best way to eat tomatoes. 

…

It’s four in the afternoon in Nosara. Ruby and I walk barefoot along the jungly path to the beach, hopping puddles and waving to the colorful crabs. We wear swimsuits like everyday clothes here. It’s our second full day, but we’ve already picked up on the way the swollen, dark clouds move onto the coast and the downpour that follows the drizzle we’re feeling now. We tuck our clothes and shoes under a hut and dive into the ocean. 

As the rain comes down harder, the people swimming around us yelp in joy. My visibility fades quickly as the storm rolls in. Uma is somewhere out in the gray horizon, surfing waves I’m not going anywhere near. A boy who can’t be more than seven years old rides a longboard on the whitewater next to me. I’m flashing him a thumbs-up as I duck under the incoming wave. The water is warmer than the air, the raindrops are like pins hitting our skin, and there’s nothing to do but accept being drenched in and out of the ocean. I think this is why people stretch out their arms, chins to the sky, in movies and in real life.

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Reading:

• “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett

Listening:

• Role Model’s “Kansas Anymore”

• Remi Wolf’s “Big Ideas”

  • My multi-talented little sister will be on tour with Remi this fall and in her upcoming NPR Tiny Desk!

• Olivia Dean’s “Messy”

Watching:

• Love Island USA Season 6 <3