SWEET SUMMERTIME

I love summer.   I do.   I didn't always.   And don't all day, every day.   But I love summer.

Sometimes I have to be reminded how much I love it.  And this summer has been a huge wake-up call.  Last summer, well, to be blunt, sucked the big one.   My father had passed earlier in the year and I was amidst what I like to call the Medical Misery Tour, feeling sick but unsure the source.   Last summer consisted of having no energy, no ability to eat, weight loss (yay!) and numerous visits to doctors (boo!)   Plus, some relationship issues and high-stress work worries... I missed out on a whole season.  In a nutshell, Summer 2011 sucked.

What a difference a year makes.  Health restored, I'm milking this summer for all it's worth, maxing out my weekends and building a tan that rivals only that of my 14th summer when, on vacation in Israel, locals approached me and spoke to me in Hebrew assuming I was a Sabra.  I'm that tan.  And I love it.   I've spent days in the pool, floating, flying down the slide and jumping into the deep end.  I've spent days at the beach, lying in the sand, swimming in the Atlantic.  I've been aboard a boat cruising (at high speeds) the Great South Bay and Fire Island Inlet only to climb ashore and plant my ass in a beach chair for the rest of the day like I was living in a Corona commercial.  I've had cocktails outdoors and seen a movie at a real honest-to-God drive-in theatre (and if seeing Batman on the big screen at the drive-in wasn't cool enough, the real bats flying back and forth in front of the screen took it to a whole other level!)  The entire summer so far has been a huge smack upside the head reminding me how much I love her and miss her the rest of the year.  And how much I love where I grew up.

I grew up on Long Island.  The older I get, the more I appreciate how awesome that fact is.   Billy Joel once said, "You either date a rich girl from the north shore or a cool girl from the south shore."  Proud South Shore girl here.  Growing up, we didn't have a pool in our backyard.  No in-ground pool.  No above-ground pool (a Northeast phenomenon apparently and a phrase, when I said it aloud to a native Californian, resulted in the same confused look Sarah Palin gets when asked a tough question like, "would you like fries with that?")    When we were very little we had the plastic Toys 'R Us pools filled with water from the hose.  I have a slew of family photos of me and my brother wallowing around happy as could be.  When it's hot, you'll take what you can get.   And it got hot.

When we were a few years older, beginning around kindergarten, summertime meant The Prospect Avenue Pool.  We had full family memberships and every day, Monday through Friday, we'd load up the car and Mom would drive the whopping 1/4 from our driveway to the pool parking lot.  We'd meet other moms and kids we knew, all lining up, waiting for the pool gates to open at 9:00am.  When the gates opened, you had to walk, not run.  (I can't count how many running-induced stubbed toes I subjected myself to during those summers and the smell of the First Aid station is etched on my brain.)  We speed-walked to the chaise-lounges, dropped our stuff and rushed over to the pool.  Perfection.  Bright blue sky reflected in the water.  Not a ripple.  No one was in it yet.   Oh, to be the first one to jump in that cold water.   And that's where we stayed - in the pool, entertaining ourselves - until our Moms called us out for lunch.   Lunchtime at The Pool was a predictable allotment of food options from home.   Tuna fish on white bread.  Cut-up cantaloupe in Tupperware.  Maybe some egg salad.  It was a bonus if you got to order from the Snack Stand.   Elio's frozen pizza.  The full menu of Good Humor ice cream bars (Chocolate Eclair or Toasted Almond, if you don't mind.)  Maybe even a frozen Milky Way.  You ate, always anxious to get back into the water.

After our Jewish Moms had declared enough time passed, we rushed back to the pool for the remainder of the afternoon.   We swam.  We flipped.  We concocted elaborate games and storylines.  We counted how long we could sit on the pool floor and how long we could stand on our hands.  The worst thing imaginable was having to pee because a bathroom run took away valuable pool time.  (Also, the floors in the ladies' bathrooms were slimy and slick and gross and you might run into an old lady wandering around nekkid.)  Our long hair had to be up in an ugly bathing cap.  We didn't do laps because those were for serious grown ups.  Sometimes we jumped off the diving board.  Always the low one, never the high one.  And we didn't dive.  (Only the kids on the diving team dove; I wasn't allowed to hang out with the one kid I knew who dove - he had a mustache at age 11 and wore a PLO t-shirt everyday.)

And then, the inevitable.  The Moms summoned us out of the pool around 4:00pm.  It was time to go home.  Just five more minutes.   Five more!  PLEEAAASSE...  Begrudgingly, we'd climb out of the pool, waterlogged and mopey, and sulk all the way to the dressing rooms so we could change into dry clothes.   (To this day, I'll never forgive the criminal who stole my Jimmie Walker "Dy-No-MITE!" cotton tote bag and I'll never forgive myself for forgetting it on that chair outside the locker rooms.)  Sunkissed we'd pile back into the family car and journey home to await our Dad's return from work.  Most nights, dinner was a backyard BBQ and then off to bed.   Back in the 70's, we didn't have central air.  We didn't even have air conditioners in every room, just the living room and my parents' room.   A sheet and a couple pillows were thrown down on the floor at the foot of my parents' bed and my brother and I would sleep there.  *Unless, it was a very special night when, if we were very good and very lucky, after dinner we'd go back to the Prospect Pool for night swim!  (Can you stand it?!)  The pool was much emptier (we were smug in knowing we were luckier than the other kids) and the glow of the lights underwater was mesmerizing.  And still we'd complain when our folks would pull us from the water and head home.   Too much pooltime was an impossibility.  

Sometimes we'd skip the pool and head to the beach.   Not the shore - that's New Jersey.   We went to The Beach.  Growing up on Long Island, in Nassau County, you have a choice of beaches but we headed to Jones Beach.  (Anyone who chooses a North Shore beach all full of shells is deranged.)  Our Moms would pack up the car and schlep us out to the beach, then schlep us down to the water where they'd set up the blankets and the towels and the chairs... while we'd rush into the waves.   If they weren't too big.  If there wasn't too much seaweed.  If we weren't scared shitless because of the #1 box office hit -- a movie about a big white fish eating swimmers off Nantucket.   The summer of JAWS did not make parenting at the beach easier.   But we got over it...   My mother would bring us out into the water, out past the point where the waves broke so we'd float up and down.   For an eternity.  Heaven.   Except for that one time Mom got hit from behind by one big sneaky rogue wave and it knocked her glasses off, losing them forever in the Atlantic.   To this day, anytime we see Charlie The Tuna, we're pretty sure he's wearing her specs.   I'm not sure how she drove home that day.    I remember the AM radio in the car.   Certain songs -- The Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" by Elton John & Kiki Dee -- even today, will take me right back to being in the car driving to the beach.

Summertime changed when I was in third grade and my mother took a job as Head Counselor at Big Chief Day Camp.  The idea of a schedule was odd but it was a small, local camp where I first rode a horse (nevermind how it accidentally wandered out into traffic on Newbridge Road...) and first slept in a tent.  I developed a love for kickball and horseback riding and, devastatingly, institutional food.   Never before had I eaten macaroni and cheese.   Or vanilla pudding.   Or as much as I wanted.  Plus, you got ice cream or ices every afternoon.   I was in heaven.   My waistline was in orbit.    That's was the summer I began to gain weight...  setting in motion a childhood battle, adolescent minefield, and adult cross-to-bear. 

After that, my Mom went back to work full-time in the insurance industry and summertime became the opposite of fun.   We couldn't be left home all day so we had to attend camp.  I hated most of it.  Structure??? It didn't matter if it was the ill-advised Rapport Program at the Dinklemeyer Elementary School which made us play excessive sports outdoors but lacked a pool (I did, however, perform in a less-than-stellar production of The Pajama Game) or the years spent in torment at H.A.N.C. (Hebrew Academy Of Nassau County) - hey, kids, what could be even less fun than Hebrew School? An entire summer of Hebrew School with some pooltime, dodgeball, and color war wedged in!  Although, to be honest... I pretty much kicked ass at newcomb, made huge progress in sticker-trading, was introduced to Ozzy Osbourne's "Blizzard Of Oz" and can still bench the Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals,) obnoxiously emphasizing the right syllables and inserting the correct "cha, cha, cha"s.   So there's that.

Two summers were spent in the South Shore Teen program and those I recall as being pretty awesome.   Me, at the height of my dorky awkward phase (due to end any minute, I'm told...) among a pretty tight group of not-quite-teens.  We spent two days a week on the small campgrounds feeling trapped and then the other three days off on excursions terrorizing the public at large: the beach, Great Adventure amusement park, a town pool... and the ultimate getaway -- a sleepover trip to Boston.    You could spot us easily along the Freedom Trail-- all of us wearing identical bumble-bee yellow t-shirts with "SST" (super small WHAT?) stamped across the front.  You couldn't miss us in Fanueil Hall attacking the Steve's Ice Cream stand.  We did accessorize, boys and girls.  We were stuck with the yellow t-shirt but we could wear whatever shorts we wanted, usually those cotton colored running shorts with the white piping.   But we always wore a bandana around our neck in the matching color.  Sure, we looked like your neighbor's yellow lab but we were 13.

That was the summer we all became obsessed with two cassette tapes.   1) THE WHO's Greatest Hits.  I'm not sure who brought this to camp; I'd guess it was the head counselor (his favorite game was to pull up in our small yellow camp bus alongside another car and pretend to be asleep at the wheel) but at least we were heavily into classic rock so good on us.   2) This was the summer of PYROMANIA.  We were all obsessed with DEF LEPPARD.  Even more obsessed with the Union Jack flag that the band members donned on their shirts and shorts...   Truth be told, Def Leppard almost got us kicked out of Boston.   We were staying at Bentley College dorms and all the boys spent the night trying to do the split kick leaps off the bunk beds that Joe Elliot did off the drum riser in the "Photograph" video.
Again, we were 13 and 14.  And dorks.  At least I was.

The summer of '84 was the end of summer fun for me.   By then, puberty and adolescence was in full swing and I was a hopeless case.  Clothing was ill-fitting.  Hair was over-permed and over-apple-pectined.  Large spectacles and random zits.  And then having to wear a bathing suit? And change in front of everyone else?   Heat? Humidity? Chub rub?  Pure. Camp. Hell.

But still, Mom wouldn't let us stay at home and, apparently, it was time for me to earn my keep.   Shipped off to be a C.I.T. at the Mid-Island Y campgrounds.    The first summer there was merely OK -- I worked with some 9 year-old girls which were pretty cool.  One of my closest friends disowned me (which sucked.)  And the guy who hung around me most wasn't remotely straight (but likely didn't realize it at the time.)  But the following two summers?  I jumped up a few notches --  Arts & Crafts Counselor, baby.  And that?  That rocked.   I loved being able to paint and color and go craft-crazy.  I loved that I didn't have to parade around in a bathing suit.  Ever.   And I loved getting to know all the kids, of all ages, at the camp.  Though, I will tell you this.  Seven-year-old boys love bugs.   Seven-year-old boys love glue.   Seven-year-old boys love to glue things to you - especially bugs.  Or Daddy Long Leg spiders, which ran rampant.  I never knew a summer wardrobe that wasn't tossed in the trash at the end of camp because the glue and glitter and paint remnants rendered them unwearable.  Also, the same way you can plan a black-tie wedding, have everyone dress up in tuxedos and sequined ballgowns yet once the cocktail hour begins and hors d'ouevres are served, all anyone really wants are the little weiners on a stick...   all anyone wants at camp is ONE thing: LANYARD.  I swear.  The first day of camp... before campers have found their campsite or their counselors or their fellow campers... before they put their lunches in the cold locker... before anything, on day one, they are straight off the camp bus and up in my grill asking, "do you have any lanyard?!?!"  Oh, yeah.  I had lanyard.  I was the Keeper Of The Lanyard.   Box stitch, barrel stitch, cobra stitch, King Cobra stitch.   I had mad skills.

From that point on, summer wasn't for play -- summer was about working.  There was always a summer job, whether at Roosevelt Field Mall (LeMarc's Hallmark shout out) or as a mother's helper or filing car accident claims at my Mom's insurance office or interning at WBAB... where did the carefree summer days disappear to?  And how did it happen so suddenly without me noticing it?   Because, let's face it.  As a grown-up (at least a responsible, productive adult) summer is just another 12 weeks of work.   Unless you are a teacher.  Absolutely, you teachers earn your summers off.  It's just sometimes, during the summer, I really want to kick you.  For most grown-ups, summer is about maximizing your weekends which leaves you hostage to the weekend weather forecast...

Working in the music industry, summer can be tricky.  The more corporate of offices (labels, MTV) follow half-day Friday summer hours.   I've never ever had that at any job.   On the whole though, everything is quieter in summer; the industry practically shuts down (or shifts east to their summer homes out in The Hamptons.)  Shit, nothing gets done in August.  It's like we all turn French and Italian for a month.  August is a void.   Yet, you have an enormous amount of concert tours criss-crossing the United States (and globe) in the summer months when amphitheaters come alive and football stadiums await their seasonal gladiators' return.  When I worked for a talent agency in the concert booking department, it was our busiest time of year.   When I worked for a band, my summer workload was completely dependent upon where the band was in their album/touring cycle.  Usually, summer meant concerts.  Big concerts.  Giants Stadium.  Wembley Stadium.  Ford Field.   Hyde Park.  Summertime was work.  Still, by August things quieted down.  (Unless, of course, you're about to release a new album in October.  Or, you know, launch an arena football franchise out of thin air. )

I admit it.  I'm 100%, undeniably, and unapologetically spoiled.   Growing up on Long Island, my hometown concert venue was either Nassau Coliseum or Jones Beach Amphitheatre and for my money, there's no place better to experience a concert than Jones Beach.   Outdoors.  On the ocean (ok, Zach's Bay, but you can see the ocean - from the lamer seats, anyway.)  Granted, if its crappy weather there can be no place more miserable (see Dave Matthews Band, June 12, 2012 monsoon for reference.)  But it's a fun miserable.  Leaning on the stage at a Kenny Chesney show after a long day of rain, it might have freaked Kenny out that the tide was flooding the first 10 rows of orchestra seats but my friend Tracy and I blissfully danced away in our soaked Tevas in six inches of bay water.   But on a perfect night... when there are no clouds and no humidity and there's a nice breeze coming in off the ocean... and the sun goes down just before the band takes the stage... Jones Beach is perfection for a show.

I remember going to the Jones Beach Amphitheatre before it was a concert venue -- when it had crappy, wooden, backless benches and our parents introduced us to touring road productions of Annie Get Your Gun and The Sound Of Music.   My personal musical history is told in the concert stubs from Jones Beach -- Paul Young & Nik Kershaw, INXS, The PowerStation, Damn Yankees, Van Halen, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, Sting, Dave Matthews Band... and god only knows how many Girls' Night Outs for Def Leppard. 

It's goofy and sentimental but the older I get the more I appreciate how lucky I was growing up on Long Island.   The access to so many beaches!! According to Google Maps my parents' home is 12 1/2 miles from the ocean... but what you can't smell on a map is the ocean air once you get 6 miles south of their house and the roadway heads out over the water towards the barrier islands.   The simplicity of walking out into the Atlantic Ocean... even driving out to Montauk Point... how many people have never seen the ocean?  Being so close to the ocean, it's second nature to me.   I can't imagine growing up in the midwest amidst corn and open plains and not having the weather (and the smell in the air) affected by the water and tides and not being a 10 minute ride away from the ocean.  And trust me, I'm an equal-opportunity-coastline-lover; I still get as excited by the Pacific as I was the first time I saw it and stepped into it 18 years ago.  (This May I was oceanfront along the Pacific and experienced my first whale sighting.  I was rendered speechless.)  Being on the water makes me happy.  The ocean makes me happy.

Maybe, like Annie Potts worries about in Pretty in Pink, I'm OD'ing on nostalgia but summertime on Long Island brings back a slew of memories which make me appreciate how where I'm from helped make me who I am.  Sure,  I can rattle off a bunch of negatives about Long Island and the greater tri-state area but I still love Long Island.  And I still love summer.  Though... living in NYC, I have to get to Long Island to enjoy all aforementioned summer activities.  And I hate pretty much everyone (and their Vera Bradley duffels) on the L.I.R.R. heading out to the East End between Memorial Day and Labor Day (but not as much as I hate the sunburned, puke-on-board, smiley-face-stickered Boardy Barn drunks on a Sunday night.)  Also, I hate mosquito bites.  And the humidity sucks -- my hair grows into an unruly Jew-fro, I get puffy, and I get cranky (humidity - the #1 reason I'll never move to Florida.  Well, maybe The Keys someday.) And Bumble & Bumble can bite me -- no matter how much of their product I use, my hair will never look as "beachy" as it does after a full day swimming in the ocean and lying on the beach.   I never quite get my suntan lotion to skin ratio quite right.  And I still don't have a beach bod.  But summer is so much more than that..

It's flip-flop weather.  I love my Tevas (even when drenched in that bay water) -- podiatry be damned.  I love my pedicured toes (I've got good looking feet, thank god, because I've sat alongside some of those talon-toed women in the salon... damn. But that's another blog.)  Summertime means foregoing the usual deeper tones and using polish with names like "Strawberry Margarita" and "Footloose."   It means a cold Corona with a wedge of lime.   It means I could eat nothing but watermelon for days.  (Two big thumbs up for Friendly's Wattamelon Roll, too!)

Summer means West End 2 and Point Lookout.  It means no makeup.  It means sand between my toes. It means I don't give a good goddamn what you think of me in a bathing suit.  It means watching my NY Mets break my heart.  It's the promise of an upstate visit to a drive-in movie, of hours in a saline pooling tossing an 8-year-old girl into the water (again! again!) and choosing the just the right not-remotely-brainy book to read (my favorite place to read in summer? standing up in a pool along the edge.)  It's avoiding "The Hamptons" until after Labor Day and knowing locals never (NEVER) go to Field 4 at Jones Beach (EVER.)  It's the smell of a backyard BBQ grill.  It's the taste of fresh sweet corn from a farmstand.  It's drinks along the Nautical Mile in Freeport.  It's Kenny Chesney season.  It's watching the sunset from the picnic tables under the Captree Bridge.  It's the sting of summer on my skin.   It's sleeping on cool sheets after a long day on the water in the sun.

And suddenly, it's August.  Summer's almost half way done...  and I don't want to miss a minute of it.

Perfect song on the radio
Sing along 'cause it's one we know
It's a smile, it's a kiss
It's a sip of wine, it's summertime
Sweet summertime