Summer.

Everyone has fond memories of summer. Those three months of freedom from school are more valuable than gold when you’re eight years old. Summer is warm days and cool nights. Summer is going outside barefoot on the soft grass and running around doing cartwheels. Summer is getting ice cream and totally pigging out. Summer is the culmination of memories that you will look back on when you’re older and say, “Those were the good ol’ days.”
For me, summer was what my family lovingly refers to as “the boat.” We would always take my dad’s 21-foot fishing boat, named Zingara, out on Lake Winnipesaukee for as many summer days as we could manage. It has the name Zingara, the Italian word for gypsy, because when my parents first bought it they moved around a lot, as gypsies do. On the boat, we would eat salt and vinegar potato chips, go swimming in the clear water using various flotation devices and have long conversations about nothing in particular. Also, most importantly, we would listen to music. Primarily 80s, or the only genre of music my parents listened to, was on the radio, drifting out of the speaker in the small cabin of the boat. Though we probably heard a million different songs while we were on Zingara, there is one that sticks out to me most of all: “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison.
I was just recently listening to “Brown-Eyed Girl” and it immediately brought me back to those “good ol’ days” on the boat. It wasn’t until then that I realized how fitting the lyrics were; spending all of those days “standing in the sunlight laughing.” It brought me back to the potato chips and the floaties and the conversations about nothing. And to the sunsets. Those gorgeous sunsets will blaze in my mind forever. There is something missing, though. I still go out on Zingara every summer, but my sister no longer goes with us. Our relationship has changed in a way, not unlike the gypsies our boat is named after. An invisible distance has grown between us and we have unintentionally traveled farther and farther apart. I miss spending those long summer days out on the water with her.
As much as it pains me to know that those days are gone, I still enjoy reminiscing about all those wonderful times out on the boat. On the front of Zingara is a single seat surrounded by a railing and a sort of walkway, or what my sister and I used as a walkway. We would sit in that seat on the front of the boat as my dad cruised along, and we would just watch the lake shimmer in the sun’s last light. The breeze was refreshing, but a bit cold right after a day of swimming. The seat was uncomfortable and there was a little flag that flapped about excitedly right in front of us, but it didn’t matter. It was still the perfect place to watch the sun dip below the trees, which, by that time, were blanketed in shadow. I will hold onto these memories, now more than ever, because my sister and I aren’t as close anymore. Instead of remembering the “good ol’ days,” I’m wondering, “Hey, where did we go?”
Summer.
The time for memory-making and laughing. The time for running or jumping or leaping about with no reason. The time for long talks. At some point, though, you have to remember that those are old times. Though going on the boat was the Holy Grail of my youth, the epitome of fun times and family, they are now just memories. Without those sunsets-and-swimming-filled days with my sister, “it’s so hard to find my way now that I’m all on my own,” but it’s time to make new memories. To find a new summer tradition that will bring the two of us closer together again. Those memories are precious but not as precious as what is to come. My sister and I will find our way back to each other, “Bit by bit.”