On the rare occasion that I should find myself in some kind of "small talk" conversation about things like ”what is your favorite season of the year” I have usually tended to answer ”all of them” because I can find reasons to like pretty much any time of the year.
The house where I spent many summers (circa 1988)
But when I sit down and really think about it, I have to admit that most of the genuinely happy memories I have revolved around summer.
I suppose that might be a fairly standard answer for kids since during the summer we were off from school and got to do pretty much nothing for six weeks, but that wasn't really my reasons for liking the summer season better.
In general, my love of summer was due to the fact that I would often get to not be at home for a couple of months and instead would go live with my auntie in the country.
It was such a treat to get to spend a little time feeling like I could actually catch my breath, and that there weren't parents around to micromanage every moment of my time nor to tell me "how I was feeling," regardless of how I was actually feeling.
It's a strangely surreal experience to grow up with parents who definitely take care of you and make sure you have plentiful food and shelter and schooling and clothes and toys, but otherwise treat you pretty much like you're an asset, like their favorite Picasso painting, or very comfortable armchair.
What was so different about living at my auntie's house where's that she actually perceived me to be a human being! I wasn't called upon to "perform" for guests, nor did she dismiss my feelings of sadness, simply because sadness was "not an acceptable emotion."
Perhaps these words make me sound like I'm a horrible person who hated my parents and that's far from the truth. I believe they did the best they could with what motivations, information and knowledge they had, although I'm pretty sure they should never have had children in the first place. However "have children" was one of the check boxes on their list of "what upstanding citizens do," so they had me.
Summers at my auntie’s house were really about freedom as much as anything. Freedom to simply be, which was not something I enjoyed in my daily life at home.
For two whole months, I would be away from tightly controlled food and activities, and often I would just wander the property, looking at nature... or sit in chair out under one of the apple trees, just reading a favorite book.
The interesting thing was that I felt no resistance to helping my auntie with chores around the extensive property... because they weren't required of me. But when I did them, they were actually appreciated, rather than taken for granted. Or required.
Maybe most people have feelings like that about their early years... but my conversations with others suggest otherwise. So I am grateful I have those month's of relative sanity.
Now, you might wonder why I would choose to write a piece of personal history such as this. Well, the answer is that one of the original appeals of being part of a crypto social blockchain venue like this was the (relative) permanence it offered, as a place to store autobiographic bits and pieces. Whether the grandkids (or anyone else) will read these words from some future perspective I don't know, but I get a measure of comfort from simply committing them to the written word.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Sunday!
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Created at 2025.08.03 01:03 PDT
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