Summer

It has been rainy here. So much so that we have mushrooms growing in our lawn. This is unheard of. It never gets (or stays) this wet here. We usually have rains and mild temperatures in April, May is sunny, if a bit windy, and by June, we're hoping for October.

It reminded me - of home. The place I grew up. Twenty minutes or so from the Oregon Coast. In a small logging community. Situated (in what I've always thought was the Coast Range, correct me if I'm wrong) the weather from the coast would back up over the hills around us, socking us in rainy weather for much of the year. Summers were unpredictable. You never could tell what you would get when you woke up.

Still, when we were kids, we'd get up and no-matter what the weather looked like, we'd dutifully put on a pair of shorts. I don't know much about meteorological issues around the rest of the globe, but I like to imagine that we met each day with an optimism and fortitude that one only sees in Navy Seals and Mr. Rodgers, one or the other.

I'm sure my mom would roll her eyes and wonder what on earth we were doing, but, having grown up in the (comparative) Banana Belt of suburban Portland, she would never know our inner turmoil. To wake up each summer morning and sally forth in our seersucker K-mart rompers despite gail force winds and pelting precipitation was our M.O.

Once outside, we'd swing in the tire swing, developing our leg muscles while trying to cling to a dripping wet tire. We'd dam the creek that ran through our yard. We'd even swim in our pool, while drops of rain pocked the surface of the water. We'd crawl through the field that sat adjacent to our back yard. Or we'd slide down the red-dirt hill on our bottoms, much to mom's dismay. She'd sigh, yell a bit, and then get out her economy sized vat of Spray-n-Wash. It is why I know for a certainty that cold and rain do not cause sickness in children. We'd straggle in for lunch with our long hair in stringy, dripping ropes, calloused feet covered in mud, sunsuits sticking to our wet bodies. We must have been quite a sight. But I doubt any kids anywhere had more fun than we did.

On the rare days that it was sunny, we'd revel in it. So glad for the clear skies that it didn't matter that it was only 65 degrees. Those days we'd skip to the field and prop up scraps of boards to reach the blackberries growing on the cliff behind the field. The blackberries would send out their vines with enormous hooked thorns, so our legs became strange dot-to-dots of scratches and scrapes.

Due to the frequent overcast skies, we'd never get very tan. The joke was that Oregonians don't tan, they rust. And that was true of us. I believe that my inability to tan has little to do with genetics and more to do with the location of my childhood. Deprived of adequate sun with which to develop a good base, I wander through life with pale, pasty skin. It is also why I am a firm believer in Nurture over Nature. I see my own daughter (raised in a sunny environ) and I want to cry. She starts out the summer the color of toast and gets progressively darker. So much so, that I expect to be questioned as to whether or not she is actually my child.

Anyway, yesterday brought an end to the rainy weather and dark clouds. The day dawned sunny and was already pretty hot by 9:00 am. And with it, my memories of soggy summers.