Summer Storms

Summer thunderstorms,

Like the ever ebbing tide,

Constant but fleeting

I was never a good poet – and that is something that has not gotten better with age – but I will never forget those three lines. It’s certainly not their quality that have impacted their permanence; they were the first words I wrote here, in this boarding school. It’s been years – decades – since I’ve stepped foot in this building, even longer since I wore that uniform, but it’s still the same.

The staff humor this old woman and allow me to wonder the halls once the bells ring and the corridors clear. A woman guides me through the halls, but I remember it all. The children dance around me, playing tag illegally and racing up and down. The floor is a different color now, and the third plank from the left at the end doesn’t creak. The guides said they replaced it a few years back to comply with new health code standards. The new air conditioning brings a chill to the air. I remember a time before that convenience, when it used to be so sweltering hot during the late summer and spring months that the boys would lift up their shirts to cool themselves off. The girls used to always try to catch a peak. A younger version of me, one with perhaps more humility and shame, would have denied being one of those girls. But I was. The woman chuckles at my story and leads me up the stairs.

Those stairs had seen many firsts during my days here. My first kiss, my friend’s first something more. There’s a new coat of paint covering old initials and hearts, but I see that new couples have already began to etch away. T+J, maybe for Tiffany and John, or Terrance and Jenny. I used to check this railing every day while changing classes, hoping for more gossip on who the newest couple was or whose names were scratched out. I still remember how our ‘H’ and ‘L’ interlocked. It was never scratched out.

The woman leads me into an empty classroom, and I start to laugh. I remember this room well. Mrs. Johnson was probably the strictest history teacher I ever had the displeasure of learning from. Course and grumpy, gray and lumpy, she had reminded me of a fossil. I was a cruel, rambunctious teenager, and I pity my old schoolteacher. I was a holy terror. If I was feeling particularly vindictive, I would buy some gum during lunch and smack it as loud as possible in the back of the classroom. Or bring magazines from my house and openly read them. On a good day, I would simply look out the window and drown out her words. I walk to where I used to sit and wonder when they switched out the desks.

It was during this period (I still remember the words ‘Industrial Revolution’ written boldly across the chalkboard), that I composed those lines. I wrote them right on the wood, not even bothering to use my notebook. It was nearing the end of the school year, and the only thought that filled my mind was of summer. Of warm breezes on a rocky shore, of lemonade by the pool, of thunderstorms.

My friends used to say I had a strange sixth sense because there would always be a thunderstorm when I said there was going to be one. Sometimes, of course jokingly, they would ask me to summon one so we would be released early in fear of lightning. Other times, they would lament the winds that came upon my request for cancelling their weekend plans. They never seemed to understand that you could tell by the smell if it was going to rain. It was almost sweet and static-y – like the electricity was charging up. It smelled like mildew and fresh dirt. The air felt heavy, like a thick, warm, wet blanket. My hair would become frizzy and disarrayed and render my mother’s efforts that morning utterly useless.

I remember when lightning hit the school once. The strike nearly shattered the glass, and the thunder was so loud that it rang in my ears for minutes afterwards. The lights had disappeared, the room was aglow with only the dark green-gray mix from the clouds outside. Several girls and boys screamed, myself included, at the sound. I hugged my best friend, who sat next to me, wondering what happened. Mrs. Johnson looked ready to faint as she gripped the edge of her desk and tried to raise her scratchy, breathy voice above to the noise to calm us. Have you ever tried to quiet a class of terrified teenagers? Nigh impossible, believe me. We spent the rest of the day without the lights.

My friend was not impressed when I bragged to her during a classroom change that I knew the storm was going to be a bad one.

My guide asks if I was a student when the lightning struck, and she is pleased to know that I was. Then she takes me back downstairs and to the outside to the small gazebo they added recently. We sit on the bench, and she asks if there is anything else I would like to see. I lean my cane next to me and let the wind drift past me in puffs. I just want to look at it one last time please, I say. The woman nods and sits quietly as I take in all the red brick and glass windows.

It has been so long since I was a student, but it feels like yesterday I graduated. Those narrow halls, those cramped classrooms, the stern teachers…none of them are quite the same anymore, but I still feel the laughter. I can still hear that creaking board that alerted us when a teacher was coming so we could hide. I can still see my best friends on those stairs, eyeing the boys who eyed them back. I can still feel my first boyfriend wrapping an arm around my shoulder in the back of the classroom.

I can still smell the coming summer storms. I struggle to stand, and my guide asks if I’m sure I don’t want to stay out longer. I suppose she can’t feel the air change to damp and heavy, can’t smell the mildew and dirt. I pat her hand as she guides me up the steps to the safety of the boarding school just before the first raindrop hits the grass behind us. In the distance is the first peal of thunder.