Mosaic of Summer Memories

Summer announces itself in many ways. Our memories have stored the sights, sounds and scents of the season from days of youth, which is maybe the best way to think of summer.

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It’s early morning when I open the car door at Dr. Greene’s office. I’m here for a fasting blood test to determine, among other things, whether the continued consumption of chocolate can seriously alter a cognitive state of being. You have your own addictions, so don’t gloat.

I’m early. The office is closed. It is a one-story building surrounded by massive oak trees with a view of the river. Two rocking chairs on the porch invite patients to relax before entering. I do. Anxiety awaits inside.

Without caffeine my nerves are calm. I smell the freshly mowed grass while an invisible mockingbird mimics his own mosaic of melodies. Summer sounds, summer scents wake up memories long ago stored in the archives of youth, as fresh today as they were decades ago.

Like looking at a silent 8 mm home video of life, long past, the memories flood in without effort.

Barefoot and footloose, hallmarks of the season,
Flashbacks recollect their itinerant wanderings.
Watermelons…thick, red, juicy with black seeds
Waiting, while we listened for Mama’s call.

June bugs and cow patties strewn in the fields,
Tadpoles and tree frogs all for the catching.
Fireflies and butterflies, nature alive,
Dragonflies and bird nests outside the screen door.

The blueberry patch, the wild plum trees,
The strawberries, wet with dew.
The blackberries, their thorns like barbed wire,
The cobbler, worth the barbed conflict.

The fishing pole, the swimming hole
The beach that stole our hours,
The secret climbs in sturdy oaks,
The bike rides into town.

I recall a year ago when we stood in the shade of a tall pine tree,
Matt and I, in Woodbine, barely a town,
Caught in the same time warp as our memories.
Empty sidewalks, a vacuum of stifling heat where nothing moves fast.

Around the corner they came. One bike, two boys.
One pedals, the other rides free, standing on the rear wheel struts.
Summer is here, South Georgia at its best.
They own the road, the scene and the day.

Like cumulus clouds in motion slow they pass, unconcerned,
Going nowhere fast, the point of it all anyway.
In shorts, shoeless, shirtless, oblivious, all they need to own,
No watch, no wallet, no wireless, no worries.

Will they recall this day? Memory seeps in slowly.
They have today what we had in ours, freedom just to be.
Though they or we give little thought to what it means,
Still they know it, not in words, but how it feels.

We feel it, too, the Frosty Kool-Aid days of yesteryear.
We hear a song, familiar, unforgotten, from a church far away:
“Precious memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul,
In the stillness of the midnight, precious sacred scenes unfold.”

So here I sit, rocking and waiting for Dr. Greene,
Reliving some barefoot days of youth,
While others find memories elsewhere,
Sipping their coffee in the cafés of strangers.

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It’s not hard to access our mosaics of summer memories. All that’s needed is a password, and a rocking chair is as good as any.


Bud Hearn
June 21, 2019