Remembering Summer

When I was a kid, during the hot summers when our upstairs got too hot to sleep comfortably in, my brother and I would make a 'nest'. We would haul our blankets and pillows down to the living room floor and create a makeshift bed in front of our box fan. We'd crank it up to 'Hi' and fall asleep to the hum of white noise, only occasionally waking to a passing thunderstorm, when we'd have to leap out of our nest and help Mom crank the windows shut against the rain.

When my husband and I bought our house last year, my mom sent over a huge bin of old linens, including many that I remembered from my childhood. I opened up the bin and gathered a set of faded yellow sheets into my arms, burying my face into them and breathing in the smell of those long-ago summer nights spent in the nest. They smelled like the back-yard clothesline, of fresh summer air and sunshine, of the linen closet in our upstairs, and of quick rain storms when the earth is dampened after a long, hot afternoon.

In my house now, I cannot make a nest when it gets hot: we have wood floors. Instead, I make the bed with my own linens I have pulled from my own clothesline. I turn both of our fans up to '3' and lie on the sheets, thinking about those summer nights I spent in my childhood home. If we had used air conditioning, or if Jake and I used it now, we would not be able to smell the summer time, and I might risk losing this wonderful memory of young innocence.