Gentle purple explosion

As a child, summer began the day I rode a bus home on the last day of a school year. At the end of this day’s ride, I would step off and walk into summer vacation.

Every other day of the school year consisted of routine. Walk from school a few blocks to the bus stop. Wait on the corner, always a bit nervous because creepy hood Whitney Miles stood in front of his house on the opposite corner, smirking at me as he did every day, hair slicked back in a greasy ducktail (D.A., as we called it, a far less polite term than “tail”), a pack of cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of his white t-shirt. Looking back, Whitney probably was harmless and more than likely lonely. We didn’t have many greasers at Smith Elementary School in Oakwood, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. He simply did not fit in. Neither did I, but that’s another whole story.

When summer began, I knew I would spend more time outdoors, away from the cement and noise of downtown. I would trade the lonely hotel room where I lived because of my father’s occupation for a country club swimming pool or, even better, a week at my grandparents’ house in Toledo, where I eagerly mowed the lawn, ran through the sprinklers on days that water rationing would allow, and sat on the porch swing chatting quietly with my sweet grandmother.

Summer meant I would spend hours playing Clue with my friend Craig Campbell, always accusing him of cheating (because he did). He won every time. I never could prove that the true perpetrator of murder was Professor Plum, who committed the deadly deed with the candlestick in the conservatory. After we tired of Clue, which we enjoyed while our parents played bridge and drank martinis, we ventured into Craig’s backyard and experienced the magic of lightning bugs. We laughed with delight as they flicked their way through the dusky night sky, and we captured as many as we could. Not realizing at our young age that we were being inhumane, we put them in a glass jar with holes in the cap, even adding grass so they would have food. They never lived until morning.

Even earlier in my childhood, summer meant paddling a canoe on Lake Winola, near Scranton, Pennsylvania. It meant riding a bit recklessly in Nancy Smith’s motorboat, frolicking over the wakes of other boats, laughing with glee as we rode high on a crest and then smacked back down on the other side. Summer meant digging up earthworms to save for bait when we fished off the boat dock later in the day. It meant stuffing my mouth with freshly picked blueberries while hiking in the Poconos, and it meant running around with sparklers on the Fourth of July.

Now, many years later, peeking into my twilight years, the first brilliant lavender blossoms of jacaranda trees signal the beginning of summer. They create a symphony of purple beginning in late May and lasting well into July. During my 20-year tenure at a local high school, one I loved and one that made my life feel tethered and tedious at the same time, huge jacarandas in the school quad began to blossom just before graduation. Tedium transformed into delight. The jacarandas changed day by day, eventually laying a soft violet carpet to cover the remnants of each day’s lunch and wads of gum. They made me realize my students and I had survived another year. They meant we would celebrate the culmination of hard work, laughter, tears and sneers. They meant I could take a much-needed break from grading papers, and students could take a break from writing them. They gave hope of a new beginning for everyone. They signaled a bright tomorrow. 

As a gift from God, I live in an area of Southern California where I see jacarandas at every turn. The median on a street I travel every day has blocks of them, each in various stages of bloom. The one in my backyard is teasing me with just a few blossoms. The one in my neighbor’s yard is a delightful palette of greens and lavenders. The ones at the local high school, right on cue, have bloomed completely. Of course they have. Graduation time is here.

I love this annual gentle purple explosion. I love the sense of ongoing creation. I love nature’s artistry. I love the coming of summer. I love jacarandas.