laura k bray

   I don’t know when I began to hate summer. When I was a child, I looked forward to it all year. My childhood summers, spent in Ohio, near Lake Erie, were filled with long, hot, humid days, playing in our yard with the neighborhood kids, and going to Headlands Beach. Our evenings were spent hunting fireflies, sleeping with windows open, hoping for a cool breeze. A week at my grandparents, and family vacations to dreamy seaside towns on Cape Cod were something to look forward to. Summers, back then, were made of the stuff that you read about in coming-of-age novels like Thimble Summer . When I was 12, we moved to Southern California. I don’t think my hatred of summer began then. Our summers simply took on a new rhythm. They were, overall, still the stuff of storybooks. We had a swimming pool in our backyard and spent hours bobbing around in the water and driving the neighbors crazy with countless games of Marco Polo . My best friend and I would play in her parent’s camper, ...