All I could think about going into this summer was, it can’t be worse than last year.1 It’s still hard to imagine the intensity of the mental fog and emotional chaos that suffused Summer ‘23. This time around was different, thanks be to God. Nothing flashy or groundbreaking.
Hot. Busy. Slightly boring, just as summer should be.
There are always items on my list that I don’t manage to cross off. It’s getting harder every year to make it to my beloved New Buffalo Beach and I haven’t visited my parents in Ohio since Memorial Day weekend (though Ruby and Si road-tripped solo for the first time!) I guess the big stuff often presents the biggest hurdles.
Lucky for us, Fat Tomato Summer is more about the small moments.
I am forever foraging bits of beauty and memory. I constantly drag found objects and the slough of nature home, as keepsakes. I gather street-level souvenirs from anywhere I travel. But I never quite know what to do with them, or where to put them. In May I thrifted this shadowbox and hung it on the wall - a gallery of good days.
This, my friends, was an exercise in hope.
What if it stared back at me all summer, empty-eyed? To get things started, I added a few stray memories from last summer (drift woods from Michigan, the blue tiles found strewn along the alley, the painted stone kicked against the curb), reminders that beauty is always waiting somewhere to interrupt the terror.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Soup to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.