So long sweet summer
I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays
So long sweet summer
I fell into you, now you’re gracefully falling away.
– “So Long Sweet Summer,” Dashboard Confessional
Dear Reader,
Would you please forgive me the rather adolescent melancholy of the lyrics up above? I know I’m well past the age for listening to Dashboard Confessional — hang on, a sec… do kids still listen to Dashboard Confessional? Probably not… — but that’s beside the point. I’ve been waking up with that song stuck in my head, which I know is a sign. My subconscious is ready to let go. So… here we go.
This summer was our last summer in the house.
Ick. Even writing it makes me a bit queasy.
It’s surprisingly much easier to say. “My parents sold their house. Mes parents ont vendu leur maison.” Maybe it’s because everyone has had that experience, the moving experience, the packing things into boxes and tossing things into the bin, becoming less and less attached to the material the further you dig into your closet. I know what that’s like; I’ve done it before. Of my own volition, I’ve moved 13 times. Not of my own volition, I’ve moved at least 16 beside that. I’m well accustomed to the “toss-your-life-into-boxes” routine.
But not with that house. And if it’s hard to say here, it’s perhaps because I’ve waxed poetic about it so many times.
I was almost born on Long Island, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was raised half-there, half-not. New York is the backdrop of my childhood, but most of my early distinct memories come from Long Island: watching my father make toaster English muffins topped with American cheese and a fried egg in a new, unfamiliar kitchen, writing in the journal we were given at the end of every elementary school year on the wraparound porch and discovering it a few days later, moldy and swollen, after I’d accidentally left it out in the rain.
Watching my brother make pizza in the pizza oven in the backyard.
And perhaps, most of all, my first night in that house. I had just finished school. I had a serious case of bronchitis and had hacked my way through my birthday and Prize Day. My dad wanted to go out to “the new house” a day early, and he wanted to bring me. My mother refused; somehow, I’m still not sure how, he got his way.
My room was my room. Everything in it was new and tinged with red, my favorite color. Red flowers on the wallpaper, a red-checked dust-ruffle around the twin bed. The rest of the family would invade the following day, making it loud and familiar, but after my dad came in and kissed me goodnight, I realized how vast it was, how much space.
We quickly filled it, with bodies, with friends. Everyone made our house their home base. We slid down the stairs when they were newly waxed, before the carpeting was put in. We had water-gun fights in the backyard that culminated in the pool. The sprawling third floor was first home to video games, played ceaselessly on the Super Mario 64, then to practices for our “shows” we would put on every summer, mostly lip-syncing and bad choreographies to Spice Girls and N*SYNC songs. We got older; it became a place to secretly nurse beers and watch television late into the night.
And as we filled the house with more and more bodies and more and more years, it became positively drenched in memories.
I was surprised, when my mother drove me away from the house for the last time this August, how little I cried. There were a few tears shed, dried and forgotten by John Street. I couldn’t miss the house; I thought it was because I’d already come to terms with it being gone. I only realized once I was back in Paris, hell-bent on seeking out Subway sandwiches — of all things — and topping them with ridiculous amounts of pickled jalapeños, walking out of my way to get iced Starbucks during my lunch break at work, listening to more country music than the poor Country Boy could bear… how hard it was, has been, is for me to let go of America, this time around.
No matter how long I’ve stayed away, I’ve always had roots back in America, roots on Alden Lane. The house is gone, and while I’m sad for the loss of the climbing tree with my initials carved into it, the kitchen where we all came to sit and talk and be, my room with the red flowers… I’m mostly sad for the loss of the place I came home to. Those roots are gone; it’s up to the four of us — me, the Actress, my brother and little sister — to make sure that we come back to one another. It’s easy to say we will; it’s harder to know how to when, after all these years, our automatic nest is gone.
The Actress and I like our toast burnt; she’s a bit more persistent with hers and used to welcome the former fire department to our house when she’d set off the smoke alarm. I was happy for the scent of the toast — burnt accidentally in Paris — and craved the charred flavor beneath the last of this summer’s tomatoes, combined with basil harvested, not from the Actress’ garden but from our little Parisian window box.
Bruschetta — both here and at home — is usually made with good bread; here I use pain au levain. But yesterday our bakeries were closed, and I had two pounds of freshly picked tomatoes about to turn. So American pain de mie in the toaster it was.
It was delicious anyway.
Bruschetta
5-7 ripe summer tomatoes, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
fleur de sel
10 basil leaves, chiffonnade
bread
1 tsp. olive oil
halved garlic clove
Mix the tomatoes, garlic, oil, salt and basil together in a glass bowl with a wooden or plastic spoon. Cover with a dishtowel and leave it out on the counter for half an hour.
Toast the bread. Drizzle with olive oil. Rub each slice with the halved garlic clove. Arrange on a plate and dump the tomatoes over. Eat out of doors, leaned over, so that you don’t get it all over your shirt.
