The last time Summer was a different season must have been the last years of University. I never took summer courses. I have no idea what I did all Summer. Probably taught more classes, watched more movies, slept worse -it got terribly humid- and felt more useless and lazy.
When I was a kid, Summer did not begin on the 4th month of Earth's passage around Sun. It began with the last school exam. Some years, there would be a period of limbo between the last exam & the day a parent came back from school with your exam results in their pockets, and then... Summer began, 3 months of freedom!
I had a cardboard box full of story books. The unboxing ceremony marked the first day of every Summer; I would pack away the school books and notebooks, dust my shelf and stack the story books in order of size. Some years the shelf would be the bottom compartment of the standing monstrosity in our shared bedroom -a hybrid between a coat hanger and a bureau- and other years the window sill or the floor of a make shift study/office I made in the corner of the dining room no one ever used in our house -these would be the years I just couldn't bear the company of my two older sisters and claimed privacy in the dining room.
We used to live in this massive -scaled by a child's size- house which was clearly designed for a family far more sophisticated than us; high ceilings, exposed varnished timber rafter, French windows overlooking the big garden, a fireplace, a cozy living room, a dining room, a huge guests sitting room and a bunch of other spaces no one had a name for. It was the first house my parents had bought after years of renting, they could not afford it and were astonished by their luck, having landed this forgotten mansion with overgrown thorny plants, the last house at the end of a cul-de-sac. We didn't look like our neighbours. My mum made our clothes which at the time embarrassed me, my dad worked in the local factory and we drove a metallic green old Chevy. In short, we were the new poor residents in an old upper class neighbourhood of an insignificant town where everyone was either related or old family friends. They remembered the previous owners, a respectable old family who had moved to the capital. They were not impressed by the replacement.
We only used the small living room that linked the kitchen and bedrooms. There was a large hardwood dining table pushed to one side of the dining room, no one used it for dining. Behind this table was the corner I used as my study in those years. I made several attempts at using the table as my study desk but I was too small & the table too high. Instead I did my homework on a funky looking old TV table on 4 roller wheels. Now that I think about it, it may have been an ugly cocktail table. No one drank in our house & for the common sour cherry drink we offered guests you didn't need a table! We made them in the kitchen in high clear glasses, taking care to pour in the water slowly over the ice so the drink remained in two phases; thick maroon cherry syrup at the bottom, clear water over. When we had guests from other towns we simply spread the dishes over a cloth on the floor of the dining room, right at the feet of the forgotten dining table chairs. We used the fireplace only when there was a snow and blackout and the boiler went off and the radiators turned icy. Our family of 5 ate at the table and benches in the kitchen. The house had many banisters and stairs up & down so you could stand in the living room & tilt your head and see all 4 corners. When we moved in, we were forever baffled by the uselessness of the soil box between the entrance and the living room. A pit filled with gravel. No one knew what it was for. There was no skylight to let in the sunshine over potential plants placed in it & there was a very good chance it would gradually turn into an unofficial trashcan where we would secretly drop a broken hairpin, a piece of gum wrap, hair, cherry and date stones. So I assume at my mum's orders it was filled with concrete and a set of creamy marble steps were constructed over that strange geometrical hole, the result somewhat resembling a stage. We used to put figurines and mirrors on it, or the 7seen table once a year, sort of like an awkward display, completely bizarre and mostly remaining useless.
The books in the cardboard box... I used to read them religiously every summer. I hardly ever got new ones. Maybe for my birthdays or when some older relative felt charitable. The nearest library was a taxi ride away, and my mum never let us take a taxi or go to the town alone or with my sisters. We had to be driven to school, to classes, to shops, to wherever. We did not wander around town. We were always accompanied and if the parents didn't have the time or patience to drive you to the library, you simply did not go to the library. I remember one summer, I must have been 10 or 11, I protested that all my friends were allowed to take a taxi to the town & it was safe to go to the library. Faced with rejection I cried and took my case to my dad and called my mum a tyrant and a prisoner who denied me books -I felt very worldly at the time. I remember my dad looking sympathetic and uncomfortable and afterwards when he drove me & my friend to the library I did not feel victory but rather embarrassment. I felt stupid for having made such a scene for such an ordinary low quality establishment that didn't even have many books I wanted to read. I'm sure I felt awfully humiliated and never insisted to go back. That's how it was with me. I didn't rebel & if I did, I was very critical of the means and the outcome. With my misguided underdeveloped childish or teenage brain I judged the shit out of everything & everyone. I measured the worth of an outcome by the suffering I went through to gain it & more often I was disappointed. Nothing was worth turning my mum's mood into sour condescension and disappointment. She would simply not look at you, not speak to you, be utterly bored and done with you.
So I read and reread the books from the box. I made walls out of heavy dining room chairs and pretended I had a room of my own which wasn't shared with sisters who were 5 and 11 years older than me -& to my memory today- hardly ever interested in me & what I did. I pretended I was important and superior.
It's scary to realise as I'm typing these words, in my late 30s, how much of that insecure child is still alive inside me. I finally went as far as the furthest continent on earth to that home, that bedroom, to make a room of my own that no one could enter. I traveled so far that no one could drop by for a visit. and now that I'm here, I'm unsure if I miss them, if I should or if I've always been rather... on my own?
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