Summer
Summer of now is so different than summer of then. Flying fruit snack, raid trails, and sports all day have turned into work, work, and more work. There is no summer for the adult. There is no waking up late and watching movies all night. There is life that needs to be run through the pasta maker to flatten it out. No bumps in this road.
I used to stand on the beach in Amagansett and throw tennis balls into the ocean over and over again, while my dogs, Bert and Ernie, retrieved them until they splayed into a sand blanket to rest. Summer reminds me of my mom, but also my dad. Separated households. Distinct memories. Sliding doors. Two lives happening simultaneously, but barely connected.
It’s mid-July now, and my idea of a day off is working in New York instead of New Jersey. I know it won’t always be like this. I know it doesn’t have to be like this. I like working. It fills me up. But I miss what summer used to mean to me. The large styrofoam cup full of sweetened iced tea from the Bridgehampton Town Deli. Don’t tell me it’s called sweet tea because it’s not. The South owns sweet tea. This was sweetened and magnificent.
A turkey sandwich on a kaiser roll on the back lip of a car’s rear drawbridge. The smell of suntan lotion and the feel of sand sticking to your skin. A revolving door at our house; never knowing which guests would sleep where and when. The summers before, when we were shipped away for two months of absolute bliss on our own in the Berkshires.
Hurricanes through window panes. Skinny-dipping on pinpricks in the bay. Morning egg sandwiches with bacon and oozing cheese. Hair of the dog. Fake IDs. Sitting in the front row for Dice Clay. Work hard all day, call friends, push the cork into a bottle, run free into the night. When drinking was fun, and danger seemed uncatchable.
I’m lying in bed this morning, my back aching, looking out the window at summer while my cats sleep at my feet. There is some kind of luxury here, too. Work from home. Watch my weight. Look at my blood test results online, again. Work in bed. It’s not what it used to be, but it is what it is.
Maybe that’s what summer has become. I drove more than ten hours in the past three days, and now my back is paying for it in Monopoly money. Two orange five hundreds, please. I could never be a beach boy again, but I never stop wishing I was back in those summers.
Cherry Coke. Criss-cross fries. Beach chairs. Pool mats. Tip me all day and let me spend the money every night. My laughable paychecks, which made me seem like a hedge fund manager at the time. Mow the grass. Fill up the water jugs on the tennis courts. Press the courts. Clay from the courts slipping into the back of your sock. The smell of a can of tennis balls when you open it, and that sound. Pop.
Drive-in movies in Bridgehampton. Underdays at camp. That feeling of invincibility mixed with the last remnants of bug spray. Battlestar Galactica sheets. I didn’t care then. I don’t care now. But I long for summer. Those summers of days past. Those summers of teenage revelry and camaraderie.
Maybe this is a sign to take more time away. To relive the summers of old. To have that mussel salad from the Harbor Deli. But the Harbor Deli is gone, along with so many of my past summers. Perspirated and sullen. I look back, and all I see is a younger version of me, engrossed in each and every singular moment.
I miss him.
© Jonathan Greene, July 13, 2026
