I love August because just the word makes me hear the sound of the beach. My sun-faded memories are of that quintessential moment right as a big wave hits hard and children shriek with joy. This is August: a rich texture of remembering, longing, all with sunny, hot, full days and lazy, warm memories that make me sadly want for something long gone.
It’s so nice thinking back to when I had no sense of time, and that is most encapsulated by my memories of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1986 — the first year of many — my parents rented a house on Chappaquiddick for the whole month of August. The buildup to going was nearly unbearable. My dad would pack our VW bus so full that he would say if there was a pingpong ball’s worth of unfilled space left then he hadn’t done it right. Every inch must be used, and it was. Everything went into the van (including our cats and dogs) and what didn’t fit then went on the roof, or in the boat trailer (including the full-size flagpole). We kids were packed in, too, around sun floats and suitcases and beach chairs. It was a game to see who could ride all the way down to Woods Hole squished and squeezed in among the stuff in the most uncomfortable position.
After what seemed like endless packing, we would finally leave. My dad captain at the wheel, my mom queenlike in the front passenger seat, all of us riding high — off to make the best memories of our lives. In actuality we were probably riding ridiculously low, weighed down by the burden of so much crap, so much tension, so much to come in the form of divorce, terminal illness, life. But my mind has strained all of that away and what I am left with is the memory of feeling magic in the air. Everything about that trip — the car games with my brother, the ferry crossing, the feeling of finally being there — is burned deep and hard into my heart because it was really the promise of summer not being over. August was the start, not the end.
The cream of my memories has truly risen to the top and what I am left with is remembering living on ice cream and fudge. I remember games, sailing, running hard and barefoot on the sun-dead, scraggly grass in the yard of our funky rented summer house with its sandy floors and the smell of the salt marsh and wet bathing suits. In my bedroom there was a window with access to the roof. My siblings, all older, would sit out there, watch the sun go down and talk about “adult” things. I would think, “Next summer I will get to go on the roof with them.” I remember very clearly when my sister finally said, “Oh, let her come out with us.” As the asphalt roofing scraped my feet, I thought, “This isn’t so great out here,” and, simultaneously, “This is the best place I have ever been.” In that house, in those summers, there were my siblings, my parents, my animals, even the guinea pig came. There was our family.
I love what the mind does, because I have no memories of leaving. I have no recollection of the arduous task and logistical nightmare it must have been to pack everyone and everything back up and schlep it all home, only then to have summer really be over.
And so every August, when I crave and yearn for the Vineyard, what is it that I’m missing?
My nostalgia is tinged with the sadness of loss. The Vineyard has changed greatly since the 1980s, as everywhere has, and so much of what I remember is gone. Going back to the island as an adult, I was searching for something familiar and it was and it wasn’t. What I wanted, of course, cannot be recreated. I know that I am actually nostalgic for siblings not spread across the country and parents in the same room, for the close company of childhood. That time in our family will never come again, but that is OK, that is good, because now there is more family — nieces and nephews and spouses and my own, sweet baby.
I am so grateful to my parents for not tossing the idea of renting a house on the Vineyard to die on the pile of things we should do someday. An idea that sounded like it might be fun ended up being one of the greatest gifts of my childhood. I want my son to have the Vineyard too, a time in his life that is so perfect it seems like it can’t be real. I am nostalgic in August, every year. And I wonder, am I alone?
Maybe it’s even nostalgia for school starting. A new school year so clearly brought a fresh start, the chance to positively mark another year with what I learned and did. As an adult, the focus has shifted to all the things I didn’t accomplish or do. I am nostalgic for summer, wanting to hold on a little longer. The early mornings with my baby now bring crisp, cool air and closing the windows that just a week ago had to be open for the oppressive heat.
The 1980s was so long before we captured every second of our lives with pictures and social media, which maybe is why I have only ever seen one picture from those summers. It’s unfortunate in a way, but also gives me the freedom to remember it how I think it was. Beautiful, fun, hot summers set to the sound of the crashing waves, which I will bring my own son to see and hear, for him to remember how he chooses.
C.S. Hammond lives in Hartland. Email her at cshammond36@gmail. com.