Just like my girl Lucy Pevensie, I don’t like when it’s always winter.

Gray skies don’t agree with me when they’re stretched over months. After one dreary week, you’ll find me bundled in three sweaters and a dead-eyed stare, acting like I’m an animal in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe who doesn’t remember what non-winter is like. And, call me crazy, but I like being able to feel the tips of my fingers and the end of my nose.

But then spring comes around, and it’s 80 degrees, and I’m reminded that my air conditioning doesn’t work. I live in a townhouse—the bedrooms are upstairs. It gets warm up there. I wear so much green already, but in summer you’d think I was a plant in a greenhouse. I had to get a dehumidifier last year because it was so damp.

But secretly, I like melting in a stuffy, upstairs heatwave.

Summer memories

Sitting on the floor in front of a blasting fan reminds me of home. It takes me back to being fifteen, lying on the top of my sheets at 12 am, trying to catch a hint of summer breeze through my open window. In my head, California is always in summer. That’s not true, of course, but it makes California into something I can bring with me.

So when it hits 80 in Cambridge, or even 75, and the skies are bright blue, and the clouds are fluffy like they were pulled straight from a cartoon, I rush outside and take a long walk in my flip-flops. I soak in the sun and pretend that I’m on the back roads behind my childhood house, getting lost in the urban forest of oak trees, hilltop houses, and crumbling cobblestone fences. I feel most myself when I’m walking nowhere on days like that. I like to pretend that it’s summer—that it’s not just a heatwave in March, sandwiched between the negatives.

I can’t be the only one who thinks the summer-weather days feel longer, and that the shadows feel smaller and softer—like they no longer house monsters, but have been converted to shade and shade alone. The air is orange and simple, and it rolls in waves, lingering with familiarity like they still hold pieces of old times. It’s sort of like when you go to a Costco or an Ikea. Once inside, they all look the same—or similar enough to trick you into thinking you’ve teleported to a universal, timeless space. Heat’s the same way. Warm sun. Blue sky. Cool breeze. Hot pavement and bare feet. It’s all a time machine, every year, without fail. More so now that I’m on the other side of the country. I’m always grasping at nostalgia.

And you know what’s funny? I used to walk for hours along the back roads behind my house, pretending that I wasn’t in the city. I’d dream of worlds and people that didn’t exist, and lose myself along the winding dead-end streets.

But now I walk the back roads behind my apartment—this little loop of street that goes nowhere but back the way you came—and I just think of home, and how I was back then, and what all of it was like. And I’ll go sit on the little cinderblock wall by the power plant, and kick my flip-flops off, and let my feet swing over the open air, and breathe in the warm, grass-tinged air… And when I shut my eyes to see the orange sea, all I can think is that this entire city is the size of my old neighborhood. That here, summer is just a season.

Non-toxic nostalgia

There’s something so nice about childhood simplicity. And true, childhood isn’t always as simple as we make it out to be. Like how, in my mind, it’s always summer in California. In my mind, childhood-me always seems to be walking out under blue skies on a warm day, thirteen, unburdened, inspired, unafraid. My back-then worries always seem to be so small—my room, my allowance, my petty summer-camp dramas. I forget how big those things all seemed.

So I guess some people have rose-colored glasses. Mine are orange. They throw the world into a marmalade daydream until my fingers get sticky. But those are good days. I get to lick my fingers clean instead of licking old wounds. I get to look at all that I had instead of all that I lost. Orange-colored memories hold a peace that other memories don’t. They resurface without guilt. They exist without instruction. It’s a non-toxic nostalgia.

That doesn’t mean the sadness doesn’t try to interrupt, like a cloud over the sun. But I’m quieter on those marmalade days. There’s more silence. I can hear better, and hearing leads to listening. So when something pokes and prods the peace I feel, it doesn’t pop it, because I can hear the gentle reminder:

I wasn’t the only one there.

It’s true—things are different now. It’s true—there are friends that I’ve lost, times I can’t get back, moments that have passed.

But when I was living those moments, I wasn’t really alone. And I’m not the only one looking back now, watching that past-me. I’m not the only one who remembers. Then and now, He sees me too.

We remember together, and smile about it together.

And it’s so nice to know that I’m not the only one who remembers me on those long summer walks.

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