Oh, Summer

Why can’t it be summer forever? Today was so unbelievably beautiful. Sunny, warm, bright blue sky. We somehow all got dressed and fed and made it out of the house (all wearing sunscreen, no less) by 10:30AM. We got to the farmer’s market and Katie went off to do the shopping while Rory napped in the sling and Rio played in the fountains with all the other cute naked babies and kids. We went home happy with peaches, plums, lemon cucumbers, melons, and dry farmed tomatoes. Oh summer produce, how good you are!

Now that I’ve started fall classes I’m feeling extra nostalgia for summer. So here’s some of my favorite Summer 2007 memories (in no particular order):

- Walking around MacKerricher with my cousin Michelle and her kids, my brother, my mom, and Katie and the kids. We found hermit crabs and seaweed holdfasts and watched an osprey diving in the waves for fish. The kids were climbing all over the rocks and tidepools just like I did when I was a kid.

- Having long talks with my dad. Watching him sleep in Rio’s bunk bed on a sunny afternoon when he and my mom came to visit and feeling a profound, nurturing gratitude well up within me.

- Going blueberry picking in Saugatuck, Michigan with Katie’s family and picking 20 pounds of blueberries in under an hour. Seeing blueberry bushes that were at least 10 feet tall and fully laden with millions of berries.

- Getting up at 6:00 AM and going hiking with my mom in the pygmy and redwood forests by my parent’s house. It was great to just have time to be together without all the distractions of being in doors and to experience the quiet of the forest in the morning time before all the equestrians and ATV riders come out.

- Discovering a place I had never seen before just above the Jughandle Staircase Trail by my parent’s house. It’s in one of these areas where the pygmy forest makes an abrupt change to mixed coniferous forest and suddenly opens up from being all dense and brushy to being wide, open with a bed of ferns on the forest floor and then high, old trees above. Someone built something there that I can best describe as a bridge, but like an arching wood pathway that just goes up along an old, twisted tan oak and can be walked on. It’s only about 12 feet off the ground but to sit at the top of it and look down the ravine into the redwoods is really awesome. What a glorious moment that was to discover it there, hiking by myself on that sunny afternoon.

- Seeing Rio and Riley laughing and dancing in the pouring rain outside of the Heartland Cafe in Chicago during a massive July thunderstorm. Oh, the Heartland Cafe! Katie took me there to eat the first time I met her, 8 years ago, in the Summer of 1999. We got our pictures taken in the photo booth and promised to be penpals.

- Going to Paul’s house in Sebastopol and picking Gravenstein apples off his tree. Rio and I made a game out of finding all the rotten apples on the ground and hitting them across the yard with a metal baseball bat. We were both covered with juicy rotten apple chunks and the smell of summer in Northern California: dry grass, sweat, and something tart and sweet.

- Walking in a park holding Rory and having a very small child point, and exclaim to the other small child next to them, “Look at that tiny daddy with that tiny baby! What a tiny daddy!” They were genuinely wowed by my shortness and not ashamed to point and shout about it. And they thought I was a man. That’s probably the funniest thing that happened to me all summer.

- Hanging out with my awesome cousins in Chicago. Visiting them at their house and hanging out in their back yard talking and shooting rubber bands, and going to Quimby’s and getting to browse comics and zines for a long time.

- Being at the San Francisco Trans March and connecting with lots of old and new friends and meeting new people. Marching with friends through the streets and feeling kind of bored with the marching but immensely proud and in love with our community. Seeing people on the sidewalks holding up signs saying “We Love Our Trans Brother and Sisters!”

Yay for summer! It’s not over yet!

- E.