Summer 2015

It was the kind of summer that smelt like fresh cut grass and salty sea air. The kind where time had no end, and the days stretched lazily into the night. Sunlight lingered on my skin like a memory—warm, even after its rays had faded from the sky. Evenings hummed with the rhythm of distant waves, while fireflies danced around me like the pixie dust from my childhood bedtime stories.

It’s a time I remember fondly.

The kind of memory that returns when you least expect it, triggered by something as simple as the scent of sunscreen or the crackle of an old clock radio. Though the years have now passed, and life is far removed from those easy summer days I once took for granted, I still find myself overcome by a quiet longing – for that stretch of time when everything felt simpler, when the world was endlessly wide and kind. Time was infinite. And so was I.

I remember one evening in particular.

My tanned legs dangled over the edge of my red and white hammock, the soft fabric gently swaying beneath me. The breeze danced through the trees, wind chimes playing a soft melody behind my head. I glanced up from my book just as the last of the sunlight caught the dust in its glow. There was a quiet calm in that moment -- a stillness in an otherwise chaotic world. It was my last summer before college, the final time I would call my childhood house home.

I pulled out my phone and filmed the world around me. I remember thinking, I’m going to want to remember this moment when it’s gone.

I watched that video not too long ago -- a moment, etched in time. Almost ten years have now passed, and the world has changed more than just me. The house still stands, but it belongs to someone else now. The pool I once spent every summer in is gone – filled, covered with soil. Grass has long since taken over.

It’s funny, really.

When you watch something back, you notice the things you once only glanced over. Like the ducks that waddled past—my mum’s pets. I suppose they took flight when she left, unable to follow her. Or our two dogs, already greying in the video—both long since buried.

When you’re young, you think those things are infinite. Untouchable. Death never seems like a possibility. But time, like the tides, keeps moving. And eventually, the goodbyes – no matter how bitter or sweet—come without warning. Without readiness.

Friends I'd once believed would stand the test of time and space become little more than a like on a photo, or the occasional “Miss you!” on a Facebook comment. I watch their lives unfold online now --engagements, babies, new homes in new cities – moments I always thought I'd be a part of.

The big milestones we used to dream of together during sleepovers have now pass without me.

It doesn’t happen overnight, I've realized. It happens slowly. Day by day, moment by moment. Lives get busy. Calls go unreturned.

And maybe you don’t notice --until one day you do.

You pull up an old video. And there it is: that moment.

The one you swore you’d never forget.

Forgotten -- until now.

I remember how easy everything felt back then -- the thrill of a life I hadn’t yet begun to live. I wasn’t burdened by resumes or worried about how I’d pay rent that week. The question of what to cook for dinner, or whether I could afford it hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

I wasn’t thinking of much at all, really. Just the breeze, and the soft whisper it made as my hammock swayed beneath me. The book resting in my lap, the texture of its pages between my fingers. And this quiet knowing, somewhere deep inside, that I would miss it all once it was gone.

That feeling – that bittersweet mix of both nostalgia and quiet grief – still lingers within me, like the faded glow of the sunlight that day. It’s strange how moments so small, can hold so much weight, even years later. Tiny treasures buried deep, safe from time, forgotten until they’re unearthed … and when they are, it’s as if time folds in on itself.

Suddenly, we are both who we were and who we’ve become in the years that have passed, standing in the same breath.

I think it’s that part that surprises me most, even now: how real it all still feels. I close my eyes and I’m back in that moment -- frozen as seventeen – suspended between childhood and everything that comes after.

That summer wasn’t just a memory.

It was a threshold.

The doorway to the rest of my life.

The final moments before everything changed.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever really notices when we’re standing at the edge of it – or if it only becomes clear in hindsight once we’ve stepped through… And maybe that’s the quiet tragedy of growing up, that we don’t know we’re saying goodbye until long after we’ve already left.

I took that moment for granted back then, believing there would be countless more summers at home -- hundreds more books to read in that red and white hammock, more sunset walks with my dogs trailing at my side. I assumed life would pause in my absence, waiting for me to return unchanged. But it never works that way, does it? No matter how much I wished it would. Like the hands of a clock, time refuses to stop. Life moves gently forward -- with or without you.

Still though, I’m grateful I captured that tiny sliver of time. It reminds me that those days, though gone, were real. That they mattered. And maybe that’s enough.

Because even as the seasons change, and the years blur into the next, I carry that summer, and all those that came before, with me.

Not just as a memory, but in the way I look for calm in the busy moments. In the way I still pause to watch the sun dip below the horizon or sit and watch the dust dance in the wind.

I can’t go back. But I can hold onto the moments that made me who I am.

And sometimes, that’s all anyone really needs.

To remember.

To know they once lived something beautiful.

And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll recognize the next moment like that—before it becomes a memory too.