After forty seven years in Sitka, Alaska I had almost lost summer as a feeling. Summer in Sitka always felt like a long weekend and never a season with its own set of emotions. When I was a little boy north of Seattle, Summer seemed almost blissful with a big garden, an orchard and a big raspberry patch. There was consistent sun, and woods to play in.
I was the youngest of five. So summer meant the older kids coming home to stay in our big old Prohibition Speak easy of a house, tucked back a mile or so from the beach. There were sheds and bunkers and Gazebo’s and other out buildings all over the property. Formal Gardens and wild flowers up the hill in the woods. Mostly, I remember freedom and lots of fun. My siblings had jobs and most summers each of them had a friend who came with to work and play with our raucous family. We picked berries and fruit my sisters made pies and dinner was the one big meal where everyone gathered together. There seemed to be a lot of practical jokes. It was in that house where we started celebrating almost any important event by hitting the celebrant with a pie in the face. I remember summer as a kind of mania.
Sitka, Alaska was more subdued. The most sun came in April, May, June… often by July and August the serious rains would begin. Though, in June the days were long and I remember when we first arrived there wearing ourselves out by staying out way to late, hiking, or paddling, or picnicking out on a sandy island, then coming home for a quick shower and bed. But it was a short season and really only one month when school was out with the best weather.
When visitors would come to Sitka it was always stressful because they almost always arrived outside the best weather envelope and I remember many gatherings where the rain poured day and night and we were forced to play poker out in a wall tent for penny candy and hitting each other in the face with pies out in the rain. Which I have to say is more fun than it sounds.
But recently, here in California, even though its only Spring, I’m beginning to have the feeling of my childhood sense of summer, there is warmth in the air that gives a sensual feeling sitting outside after dinner: long conversations with friends who come to visit… and people like to come and visit.. Family, friends, so far there have arrived with no pies in the face but I’m predicting it will happen once the true heat of summer comes along.
I was lucky to be alive back in Woodway Park. My dad was doing well at his job with the phone company and we were all enjoying the upper middle class life of having enough money. But the things that made us most happy was the big old barn like house on three acres of cultivation and enough people around to help (including an old English Gardner who lived in a building next to the orchard. I think he felt lucky for the work and his situation too.) Thinking back on it now, we must have been rich, but there was no one to feel superior to because all our neighbors seemed to be as happy as we were. But this is a childhood memory which always feel bred to select out happiness for our memory. I’m sure there was grief … but was blissfully immune.
Today Jan and I live in a small condominium. All the garden property with its flower gardens and pathways are communally owned by our neighbors. This now lends its own happiness. The people I meet are mostly happy and eager to say hello… still there is grief, I’m certain of it, many people mention their living alone after the death of their spouse.
Yet there is a big garden where fruit and vegetables grow, only made possible by the mania of summer on its way.
Here is an old summer poem:
