Twas a Mid Summers Night Dream...

*This post was written about 8 days ago and has just been parked on the back burner. Waiting for me to get over my trials and tribulations. (that was a jest) I was waxing very poetic that that night, so please just go with the flow...

We drove home around 12:30pm from the store with the windows down. The temperatures outside had come down a few degrees from the triple digits that have been plaguing Northern Texas the past 3 or more weeks. But beyond the humidity and stale air you could catch a whiff of the lust. The dying smell of summer romance and what it means the week before school starts. Those kids parked around the town square were trying to eek out just the few remaining days they had.

My mind was taken back to the summer of 1986. The year before I would be a senior in high school. The final chapter of the past 12 years of my formal education was at hand. And for one summer I had a boyfriend who let me be myself. There were no sharp edges with him, he liked me for the conversations we had and the fact that I was willing to go down to the river with him and just be content to watch him fish. I guess you could say I was a cheap date! Laying on my favorite blanket that he kept in the trunk of his car we would just talk. Watch the stars, hold hands and talk. As that summer wound down I felt the panic rise in my throat. He and I were not in the same class, by two measures. He was younger than I and he was a jock and I was just fresh back from California with music, hair, and clothes that the kids of a small Oklahoman town only saw on MTV. We both knew it would not work. So there it hung, like the stale humid air at the end of summer. We stayed out past curfew one last time knowing we would both get in trouble. He got grounded and so did I. So we just quit speaking to each other. When we did see each other neither existed.

And here there is hangs the end of summer vacation is here. Desperation and excitement linger in the air like an old woman's perfume, familiar and repulsive all at the same time. I yearn to be younger but know that I can never go back. Bittersweet.