Joyful Summers of Mourning

For most people, summer is typically associated with relief. Relief from the growing pains of spring and the reflective dormancy of winter. For farmers, it’s usually peak hustle time, but even in the hustle there’s (some) relief from the anticipation of what will happen this year. Summer starts giving us answers and offering new questions and considerations for the next year.

All this to say that summertime is more important to me as an adult than it was when I was a kid. In my home-schooling experience, school happened year round. While the warmer months allowed for a more flexible study schedule, summer didn’t feel that much different from the other seasons to me. I’d spend a portion of the spring working with my mom to plan the topics and activities that would be a part of my summer studies. Art classes, entrepreneurial endeavors, languages, recipes to test, crafting projects, book lists, insects to hide and observe under my bed, etc.

Summer did seem to wake up the city of Baltimore a bit more with a plethora of activities for families like library reading marathons, street festivals, and frequent trips to Patterson Park. In the mix of this, summer always seemed to have a darkness to it for me, one that is distinct from winter’s darkness.

One summer our family didn’t have electricity or hot water. While my parents had found a temporary solution of boiling water for us to clean dishes and bathe with, my sister and I decided to experiment with the exhilaration of cold showers, which had us screaming and giggling like lunatics.

Another summer I met my maternal grandfather for the first time, and shortly after he passed away. I remember meeting a lot of new-to-me relatives that summer, and there being so many emotions and controversy coming from the adults around me. It seemed like we were getting more gifts and treats than usual from these people, it made me both happy and really confused.

The more recent summers of my adulthood have included a similar dissonance of joy, softening sustained moments of distress and internal mourning. This summer is slightly different, as the heaviness continues in very unfamiliar ways, yet I can’t access my joys in the ways that I’d prefer.

I wish my parents still lived uptown so I could receive my mom’s embrace and share veggies from the farm as some token of my appreciation. I wish I could talk to my grandma and hear her sassy words of advice and adoration.

Phone calls and receipts will have to do for now.

Some of this season’s receipts are a bit indulgent with multiple steps for preparation, while others are simple and chill. Easy pathways to temporary relief. My hope is that if you make them that they offer you some joy if you’ve been needing a bit of that.

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