Greeting Summer

Summers Nostalgia as a gift

I’m in love with the heat that touches me the moment I step outside, like the world itself is leaning in a little closer to me. The warmth of everything settling like it never left, but just waiting for me to notice it again. I am here. The sacredness of summer lives within me. I carry it in my footsteps, in my dreams as I drift to sleep, and in every exchange I have with the world around me. It settles into my skin like sunlight, guiding me back to myself. In summer, I never feel lost, only found.

Maybe it has to do with me being born on a hot day. July 17.

I am seeing everything again for the first time.

Photography by David Hamilton

The beauty of summer mirrors me.

It arrives with that familiar, nostalgic haze. I've longed for the perfect hot day. I lie in the grass, the sun beating down on me. How I've missed it. It's no longer lukewarm—I can feel my skin warming, almost burning. Finally. One of my guilty pleasures of summer. The greatest of them all is the crippling nostalgia it brings. I bite into the ripest cherry yet, and for a moment, everything feels suspended in time. Something in the air feels like it carries all my childhood memories. Heat on my skin, the sound of insects in the evening, ice cream, freshly cut grass, bright sunlight, the feeling of being outside until it gets dark.

As the days grow warmer, the simplicity of summer fills my mind with familiar daydreams. Staring up at the blue sky, watching children run across the lawn. They race around, jump inside bean bags, and laugh without a care in the world. Their lightness infultrates the air. Watching them, I drift somewhere far away back to childhood.

Like after a long day at school, your mom finally picks you up. The ride home is quiet and comforting. Patches of sun kiss your face as the car drives. You might drift off to sleep knowing you're safe. When you arrive home, there's food waiting on the table, and that comforting smell welcomes you.

On days like these, I find myself longing for that feeling again, not just to be young, but to be held by the certainty that everything would be okay.

The other day I came across a picture of my childhood home, where I spent all of my time playing outside at that age, never knowing time would pass so fast. I zoomed in at every detail of the house. I could imagine my younger self running in through the door after school to see my mother.

Childhood home in San Diego.

There is something so delightful about knowing that, despite how much the world changes, the delights of summer endure. Long before us, people found themselves softened by the same warm evenings, captivated by the same golden light, and comforted by the same abundance of life. The thought connects me to something larger than myself. Summer feels timeless in that way. It returns year after year, and each time it does, I recognize a part of myself within it.

I feel swallowed between the bittersweet taste of gratitude and longing.

This brought to my memory Clarice Lispector, reflecting on her summers as a kid, going to the beach at dawn with her family in her book Too Much Life. She shared how deeply it stayed with her. Sometimes what we once overlook as kids stays with us in the most beautiful way… but one never knows till it is gone.

“How should I ask for a repeat of that happiness? How can I feel again the fresh innocence of the Red sun rising?

Never again?

Never again.

Never. “

I hope that when I am old, my skin wrinkled from too much sun, I can remember every mundane memory I got to live in my youth. How wonderful. I will make the most beautiful life and I know I will eventually miss it too.

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