The Sounds of Summer

I heard my first cicada of the summer a week ago. It’s such a distinct summer sound, especially since they call in the daytime, usually in the heat of the day. I don't hear them nearly as much in Tennessee as I did growing up in Georgia, so this was a treat.

That sound screams ‘summer’ to me. It is forever wrapped up with long, lazy, hot Georgia days spent mostly in the shade of deep woods, climbing trees or swinging from them, building trails or playing made-up games. I remember what a drink of water tasted like before water bottles, when it was right out of somebody’s hose. I smell freshly crushed pine needles from climbing saplings. I see the deep, almost black purple juice that comes from poke salad berries when you crush them (it’s really purple on your clothes, though. And it doesn’t come off, either). I remember the smell of scorching hot pavement, wet from a summer thunderstorm, and playing in the garage with the door open, listening to rumbling thunder and pounding rain hit the driveway outside.

Cicadas are for bike-riding days, when we raced up and down the street, putting our feet on the handlebars as we flew down the hill, the wind cooling us when nothing else would. They’re for days of playing on the slip-n-slide until it was a puddle of red mud at the bottom and we all had swimmer’s ear by that evening. Evenings of catching lightning bugs and imprisoning them in a mayonnaise jar with holes poked in the top, just for an excuse to run around in the dark.

Cicadas are childhood to me, I guess. I hope someday they mean the same to my boys, wherever they end up, but somehow I think their memories will be different. Tennessee doesn’t have pine, it has cedar. We don’t live in a subdivision, but in the country. Their friends are mostly each other. I can’t let them roam nearly as freely or as far as I did. But the games of childhood haven’t changed - they enjoy riding their bikes and swinging from trees. They run and chase one another in the gathering dusk, and lightning bugs are still fascinating. Long, carefree days can still be magical. I do love summer, and its short duration reminds me: this is a season of life to hold on to with both hands.