Summertime

Summer's approaching at last. In Ohio, summer doesn't last long enough to feel like it makes up for all the time we spend buried in the snow. There aren't enough bonfires, late sunsets, or nights spent covered up with a sheet instead of five different comforters.

The older I get, the less special it feels. Summer is less eventful, but busier anyway. I think more and more about past summers than the ones ahead.

I miss the weekend bonfires, trips to the Goodyear hunting and fishing club, days with my cousins, walking to Walgreens to stand in the air conditioning and scrape together enough change to buy candy. The Summit County fair, the Canfield fair, demolition derbies and the world's smallest woman. The tiny kitchen full of fermenting homemade wine. Weekends at the cabin in Southern Ohio, and a trip to the waterfall. Hikes through the Gorge and a million other places my dad seemed to know everything about.

It almost doesn't seem right to blame the demise of all those things on a person, but I do it anyway. We could have gone on that way forever, if not for one fat, bossy woman who sank her claws into my father. Ever since, it's been nothing but change. Renovate our little house, move out, renovate the next, move again, this time far away. Get married, shove religion down my papa's throat and turn him into a zombie, make him so that I have to tiptoe around him with every word I say.

I miss the time before that. Today I just want to go back to simple. The old house, the old way. Days in the sun, with the radio playing on the porch and clothes on the line.