Once upon a time, I enjoyed summer. Of course, I was a kid then. Who wouldn't like months off from schoolwork (and yet I still spent a lot of time reading books like the nerd I am), evenings chasing lighting bugs, days spent splashing in creeks near my maternal grandparents' house, and picking wildflowers to my heart's content? Add in watermelon and home-churned ice cream, and it was just perfect.

That was then. I started souring on summer probably during the camping trip I spent, first, covered in leeches, and then with a very bad sunburn. After that trip, I refused to go camping (nearly drowning a few years before didn't do it, but that did), and would spend that time with my paternal grandma in Fort Smith and my cousins who lived a few blocks away from her.

I still love watching lightning bugs in my backyard, but from the comfort of indoor air conditioning. There are no creeks near me now, and my grandparents' home, where my oldest brother spent his final days, has been auctioned off. I'll always love wildflowers and home-churned ice cream, but more often I get my ice cream in a carton. As for watermelon, well, I lost the taste for that somewhere along the way.

Times change. And the summers of my youth were nowhere near the unremitting heat of the summers now, even though there were years we had little or no air conditioning, and the storms we get now are more fierce than before. But sure,........

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