The very little kids that were once in my neighborhood are now all young adults. So I miss a lot of the sounds of kids in the summer. I hear them now and again through the woods from neighboring streets, and it makes me smile. that is such a happy sound, the sound of kids playing outside in the summer.
That doesn’t necessarily happen the same way today as when we were kids. Among other things we live in a very different world. And I would like to think kids can go out and play kick the can and hide and seek as dusk turns to dark, but I don’t know if they still do or not.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes in the very early morning when you’re getting ready to wake up, sometimes memories, come unbidden at the end of dreaming as you start to wake? Since the windows have been open the past couple of nights because thankfully it’s been cooler, I had a couple of those memories.
When was of summer nights at the beach when we were little. We all played and played, and sometimes we went with our parents and their friends and their kids to stand on the beach and look up at the starry sky and learn about the constellations, I used to love that. Do kids still do that?
Other memories are under a beach street light as we chased those little frogs or maybe they were toads that you used to see all over Avalon, NJ in the summer. I remember we used to find them in particular at this house people we knew back the used to rent in the summer. It was like a dark red clapboard house. I don’t even know if the house exists because so much of Avalon has been torn down and new houses built. The house was down somewhere near 15th street, but it was a couple blocks off of the beach.
That house is one that I remember because it had an old-fashioned screened in porch and when you went up into a little driveway, it was right there. The house was situated sideways from the street, so you went in the little teeny weenie, kind of driveway and the front of the house was at the side of the driveway. The driveway wasn’t paved. It was pebbles and the front porch had squeaky old-fashioned screen doors.
I remember the girl’s father used to make chili in the summer and he made it with corn. And I remember the girl had an Easy Bake oven. Remember those? (Of course she also had a hamster that lived in the center of the dining room table, which I didn’t like very much and it was kind of gross to look at the hamster doing their thing including pooping while you’re eating dinner.)
But it’s funny. I’ve had a few of these late summer memories popping up in the wee hours of the morning and I think of now is the time my mother used to start stressing out about whether we had everything we needed to go back to school with. When I was really little that included visits to the place in Conshohocken, that was like basically a uniform factory. How I hated that store. You had to stand there and be measured in the fabrics were scratchy.
And other things I’ve noticed is how the air is starting to change and feel at night as we get closer to September. I don’t know how to explain it adequately, so I hope I’m verbalizing it right but you know how the air just changes how it feels at the end of summer. And that’s one of those things I’ve always noticed, when the air starts to change.
Sometimes I wonder what it’s like being a kid today. What I mean is being a kid has its ups and downs, no matter what right? But it seems that maybe times were a little bit more simple when we were growing up? Or is it that we were simply younger, and we didn’t see things through adult eyes?
And I was thinking about summer memories again last night when I was outside, listening to the owls in our woods. we have screech, owls and another kind of owl with a deep low “who who.” There were also wood thrushes singing at dusk. I’ve always loved looking at and listening to birds outside, and I think the little kid I once was would’ve loved listening to owls at night.
OK, just some random acts of pondering meets memories. Have a great day.
