Summer in Brazil

Every summer in Vancouver, I wait for it. And it never comes, summer. Ah sure, some years after an interminable rainy June, we get lucky, the sun comes out for a few days in a row, we scrape layers of rust from our bbqs and we dare to go out with bare shoulders past sundown, but that's not summer. Not to me. Summer is the seemingly endless string of sunny days sucking on Popsicles and sweaty nights with the fan on. My memories of the summers of my youth are filled with the scent of dry grass that cut my feet as I run to plunge off the end of the dock into the refreshing, dark waters of the lake. I hoist myself back up out of the water, giving a kick to untie myself from the tickling algae wrapped around my toes and lay my cool body on the hot wood, tracing the carvings, JT loves MK forever with my finger. I daydream that I could have a summer romance like in the musty second hand Sweet Valley High novels I bought at the Thrift store, but I know I won't, mostly because the only boys I've seen around have more of the slight mullet/Guns and Roses tank top look to them than the dreamy, sun-kissed, clean cut sailors from Sweet Valley. Summers are countless bike rides to the ice cream shop because dad will always side with you if you ask him before mom. Days filled with canoeing, picnics, wet bathing suits, and visits with the cousins and nights buzzing first with mosquitos, then cicadas, crackling campfires, and kids laughing in smelly sleeping bags.

Most of all, summer is waking up every morning, day after day and knowing it's sunny and it's hot, and the best place to be is near water. Being here in Rio, with the temperature in the high 30's and not a day of rain in sight, brings back all these wonderful memories of what summer really is, and sorry folks in Vancouver, but even when one or even two weeks goes by without rain, there's always that feeling that today might be the last sunny day.....and just that inkling....makes it feel like a prolonged warm Spring that slides into a cool crispy Fall.