On the Meaning of Summer
How our mental picture differs from the different realities around the world
For many people the world “summer” evokes the beach, long days spend with friends, outdoor concerts, lazy hours reading books by a pool and evenings at a terrace with cold drinks. I lived most of my live close to Barcelona, Spain, by the Mediterranean Sea. Every year a new spot of the local beer company Estrella Damm would appear on TV and digital channels representing all of the above. The slogan was “Mediterráneamente” (Mediterraneanly).
I witnessed how many of my friends embodied those commercials. The luckiest ones would spend weeks in idilic islands like Menorca but even the ones that didn’t travel far had what I thought were amazing summers. Free concerts and parties organised by town’s halls that would lead to amazing adventures and summer flings, camping with friends, late dips in the sea…
I witnessed it all but I didn’t participate of any of it. My parents have always had seasonal businesses and the peak time was always summer. As kids, my sister and I would spent several weeks with my grandma and our other cousins in a second home she has inland. Those weeks are the closest to what a summer is for most people. We would take our bicycles and have adventures, stop to pick wild blackberries and take them home so our grandma could bake a cake with them. And mornings were spent by the community pool practicing who was the one who could stay the longest underwater. We also had lots of chores as she was the only adult and we were 5 young children, so we did lot of weeping the garden’s pine leaves.
The rest of the summer weeks would be spent watching tv at home. Both my sister and I were too shy to go out by ourselves, most of our friends were away and we had too many body issues to even walk the few meters that separated our house from the beach. At the age of 14 I started helping out. I would take my bicycle and go to my parent’s factory where they produce some local beverages and ice-creams, and do the work of a very inexperienced secretary.
Later on, I started working in the family ice-cream shop and those became my summer days. I served happiness to people that were enjoying their vacation, or at least, their free evenings. I was literally living and working in front of the Mediterranean Sea, experiencing the idilic summer through others and sweating like a pig because during all the years I worked there, we had no air conditioning. You would think working with ice-cream would feel cool (both literally and figuratively) but it was not. The machines need a lot of power to maintain the low temperatures in the super hot Spanish days and all the heat they expelled was directed to our feet. It didn’t feel necessarily rad either as it was intense work in a very small space and you had to keep a smile on your face at all times. We had our fun too and I learned a ton of social skills, so I am not complaining.
The other day I was browsing Instagram and I stopped at a post that surprised me before I could connect one and one. My IG feed is mostly food images and these days what it shows are salads, strawberry and peach recipes, cocktails, grilled meats, etc. That post was of a beautiful layered cake styled in very warm tones and with dried autumnal leaves on top. It didn’t match with the rest of the feed. It didn’t speak of summer. Because the photographer, Antonia Larrain, is not enjoying summer now, but winter. She lives in Chile, at the southern bit of the world and she took that photo in May for her daughter’s birthday, which was already cold.
That was the beginning of the question: what is the meaning of summer? And how much our mental images of what summer is matches with people’s realities?
I have lived my whole live by the Mediterranean Sea but never enjoyed a truly Mediterranean summer. I experienced the humid heat, the long days, and other’s excitement. But my times in the sea became early mornings before opening the shop (just taking a sarong and the house keys and going for a quick swim) and late summer days when most people were back in the office.
When I moved to Thailand, seasons morphed and time seamed to stop. I could not pin point when something happened because looking at a photo we would always be wearing shorts and a t-shirt or a light dress. Thailand, as all tropical countries, is always hot. There’s degrees, though. And then there’s the rainy season when monsoons wash the region and the sky seems to be falling down to earth. I learned to always carry flip flops and an umbrella in my bag every time I left the house during the summer. Also, I wouldn’t want to miss a light sweater and a scarf because the contrasting temperature between the outside and the malls guaranteed a cold even before Covid.
“Having access to endless summer in Puerto Rico has changed the meaning of summer the same way being a freelancer has changed the meaning of a "workday"—that I can decide when I go to the beach or when I write means I kind of take it all for granted.
It's really hot here in the summer, as you can imagine, so there are fewer greens available. It's actually not the ideal vegetable time that I would've experienced in a temperate climate. But the shifting weather patterns induced by climate change mean we simply don't know what to expect: Lots of rain might destroy some crops and help others. I make no plans. I also don't really change how I cook, though, because our apartment is always open to the air; I don't mind turning on the oven if turning on the oven is what I have to do to eat what I want to eat.”
In our little town house in Bangkok we had a very basic kitchen. It was also open to the air, as Alicia says, but a lack of an extractor fan meant having to be ingenious with the placement of our standing ventilator to direct the odours outdoors. Sometimes that welcomed snakes, but that’s another story. The kitchen didn’t even have a stove, so we cooked in a plugged-in cooker. To be honest, Ross and I didn’t bother much at that time of our lives. Simple salads seemed appropriate. If we wanted something more elaborate, a street meal would cost about $1.5. But we had a grill in the patio and Ross got a taste for making breads in a dutch oven and even sometimes pies.
That’s what
from most probably does as well, though baking bread does not reduce to summer explicitly. He told me this is his favourite season as he really enjoys the warm weather and actually doesn’t tolerate very well the cold. Which I am sure must be challenging given that he lives in Massachusetts, as Ross and I also do now. We moved last June, so over a year now, and we have experienced all seasons. I will say, they all have something really exciting, but summer is just beautiful in New England.“Summer is my favorite season, by a mile. I love warm weather (humidity, not so much, thanks, climate change), and hate the cold (I wear a hat and long underwear from head to toe every other season just to keep the chill at bay). I’m way more productive when the days are long, including finding time for leisure. (I just wish I could figure out how to get into the summer groove before the solstice is in the rear-view mirror.) New England is especially sweet in summer, since both ocean and mountains are but a short drive away. And summer to me means trips to Cape Cod, especially Provincetown, which is the greatest little city on the sea in the world.”
I have yet to visit Provincetown and Cape Cod (Andrew promised me that there’s a local way to enjoy it even during peak summer), but I have been to Portland, Maine, and at the end of August I’ll be taking a road trip around Vermont.
Since I became a freelancer, vacation is relative. I am still publishing one newsletter a week during summer and running my photography business on the side. The good thing about long days is that you don’t need to worry about “running out of light” and I can plan various photoshoots during the day as well as visit different farms and producers and photographing on location.
Until I got here, I would have never imagined it would get so hot in Boston being quite up north. Fellow writer
from has it more difficult, though. She misses being able to eat outside as she would in Ukraine or Barcelona, but in the hellish hot Austin, where she now lives, it’s simply impossible.“Summers in Austin usually mean transitioning to an early morning existence or going on super late night walks once the sun goes down. The hottest parts of the day here are in the late afternoon, people usually stay indoors between 2pm and 4/5pm. […] As far as food goes. Using the oven as little as possible which makes me incredibly sad since I love baking. We try to use our pizza oven in the late evening to cook outside, but honestly it's usually too hot for that as well.”
I just came back from a long weekend visiting some friends in Savannah, Georgia (more on that on next week’s newsletter!). I loved the city and the area and even if it was also very hot and humid, it felt similar to the Barcelona summer I am more used to. Our friends live in Copenhagen but they were there spending time with parents. Irv and Debora are an elderly couple from Ohio that decided to retire in the warm South. It would be something quite rare to do in Spain but here in the States it’s not uncommon. Irv told me his summers now involve barbecuing, some early hours by the beach and enjoying their pool at home.
Nicholas, our friend and his son, remembers his summer childhood in Ohio going to lots of sports games, specially baseball. His wife, Tanja, used to spend her Danish summers hiking and camping: enjoying sunlight until almost 11pm. Now, their two boys, flip between the Scandinavian country and humid Savannah, fortunate enough to visit the place at the prime of its most beloved fruit: the peach.
For some, summer may represent exiting trips to other countries, lethargic afternoons with the blinds closed, cockroaches floating in the heavy tropical rain or even sweaters and warm bakes. My parents’ summer means work, hard work. But then, come November, they are free to travel, have lazy afternoons watching movies, and even enjoy other people’s beaches. And then, they smile, knowing their sticky sweat got transformed into lower hotel prices, fewer crews and getting out of season tans that are looked enviously by their friends back home.
I got some of that attitude myself. Summer is not necessarily associated with travel for me, or even with vacation. But long hours of day-light present newer opportunities for exploring what you have around and for being grateful for the experience.
It's interesting to see how summer means something different to different people. I enjoyed reading about your perspective on summer Elisabet!
A very fascinating read Elisabet!