Texas Summer –
I write this having just driven down the prettiest street in Austin with my windows rolled down despite the heat (you are aware, I am sure, that my car has made it all too clear she finds the idea of eternity in a junkyard more appealing than another few years with me. She, I think, finds the temperamental nature of the AC funny – I assure you I do not). As it happens, there is little in the world to make a person appreciate the beauty of a blistering sun beyond a perhaps-broken air conditioner.
And you are, I admit, rather stunning.
You, Summer in Texas, are youth. A hard-won respite whose air is ripe with righteousness and a nobility that knows no order. You are at once ancient and new – your evolution is perhaps nonexistent, but stagnant you are not. You are the hiss of locusts waking in the early afternoon and singing until the stars rise, the sharp call of a bird whose plumage I could not identify but whose voice I have listened to in bed every morning since my youth. You are the dirt and cobwebs gathered on the bottom of great white columns in front of old houses, little specks of grey and brown that won’t ever disappear no matter how often they are sprayed with the green snake-hose.
You are trees. Trees, whose trunks turn pale brown with thirst and leaves are coated in a film of dust. Trees that arch over streets and cast patterns on the asphalt in a manner foreign to the other seasons. Trees that stand with dignity and a certain lawless grandeur, having seen generations of settlers drive and walk and ride beneath their stretching boughs. Trees with spiked leaves, magnolias with thick, climbable branches, trees with little pink buds that spray velvet-soft petals in the wind.
You are movement even in stillness, the aliveness that can not be escaped even when the wind is still and people stamp their feet, waiting for a breeze to relieve them of the sun you summon. You are the antithesis of the insipid, and the density of slowness.
You are lizards and bugs.
You are a Walmart sprinkler hose and green gingham swimsuits. You are wet curls and years-old towels, hot from sitting in the sun. You are watermelon by the pool, salty from the chlorine running off pruned fingers. You are the days it is too hot to even think about swimming, and then you are rattan ceiling fans and fighting over at what temperature to set the AC to best balance comfort and economics.
You are lantana, spiky and dry, popping out of the ground in pink and yellow and orange. You are cacti in the country. You are the one cactus in Johnson City that tugs at the sides of my lips whenever it crosses my mind, because of the many, many silly memories attached. You are that cactus, in some form or other, for everyone.
You are wet hair and short pajamas and the light from the microwave in the kitchen while a movie glows for a group of happy watchers. You are the rich purple-blue of the sky as the sun sets outside, the thickness of the air kept out by windows that are powerless against the vibrance of your heart beating all around. You are yellow ceiling lights that cast long shadows while telling stories to friends in the late hours of the night. You are overheating in bed and kicking off the covers, then pulling up the top sheet for fear of monsters.
You are the first trickle of sweat down my back, then my front, then little beads on my nose, and, humiliatingly, a little mustache of clear droplets. You are the comfort that this is a universal experience.
You are the unmistakable pride of the Gulf of Mexico. The dark lines underfoot in the sand where the water meets the sea, and the sky spans dazzling blue and cloudless above, and everything in view is vast and gleaming and gritty. You are the sound of a can opening beachside, the way my skin feels dry and tight after a day by the coast, the enlargement of freckles across countless noses, the sizzle of a bottle of sunscreen.
You are not, seagulls. I can – and do – love many a flawed being, but seagulls are one nuisance for which I really can not make room in my heart.
You are wading in the water, cold around my ankles. You are springs and little rivers, hot rocks dry and small, tough plants jutting out from the cracks between. And you are the smell of these things – the distinct scent of hot earth, of grass baking in the sun, of river water flowing through reeds that mothers bar from being navigated for fear of rattlesnakes. You are the smokiness of a grill and the way heads turn when they catch a whiff of sausage and burgers roasting over charcoal.
You are the morning light, a white-golden colour I have never seen upon waking anywhere else. A light that seems dense in its brightness and yet as insubstantial as the clouds upon which Heaven rests.
You are not nostalgia – and for that I am rather grateful, as I have enough of a penchant for longing and remembering as it is – because you return the same year after year. I could sleep for a thousand years, I could be blindfolded and dropped like a pin on a map anywhere in the world, and know without a doubt I have been taken home to you.
How I love you, Texas Summer.
Love,
Lettie Anne
Please join me in praying for the people of, and donating to the disaster relief fund for, Kerr County.
Kerr County Flood Relief: https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201
Checks made payable to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund may be mailed to:
Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country
241 Earl Garrett Street, Kerrville, Texas 78028
Any amount of donation is greatly appreciated.
Kerr County Animal Services:
Cash donations are always accepted, as long as the donor designates the monetary gift for use by the local animal control authority, by noting “KCAS” in the Memo Line.
Mail checks payable to:
Kerr County Animal Services
3600 Loop 534
Kerrville, TX 78028
For those who would like to provide goods rather than cash, KCAS asks that future donors call 830-257-3100 in advance to ask what supplies might be needed.
Anyone bringing a donation of supplies in a large quantity is asked to please bring help for unloading.
#KerrUnited
#KerrStrong