They change your life when they arrive, and again when they leave

August's contradictions

If all of summer were a collection of days like these, I’d never want summer to end. We take a walk, the air absent from its usual humid cloak and it’s so surprisingly pleasant that we declare it out loud every single time we step outside. July was beastly hot, but this month has made us fall in love with summer all over again.

But it’s also mid-August, and with it comes a slight tightening at the chest. I can feel it and I know you can too. I wander around the apartment, eyes scanning the rooms taking inventory of what needs to be packed up in boxes again. The cluttered desks full of nail polish bottles and jars of lotion and tonics. Piles of clothes draped over chairs that never see the inside of closets no matter how many times I nudge you. It’s not sadness or melancholy, but something more puzzling, like a hollow feeling in the chest.

For some, January is the start of a new year. For us and others, it’s right around now when school is about to begin. We grasp at the last few weeks like we do every August when we look up and realize that summer is slipping away from us. Just one more lazy day on the grass, just one more ice cream at the waterfront’s edge gazing out at the skyline.

Summer is when time is most slippery. It feels like ages ago when we were walking through lavender fields in Washington, but it was only last month. Remember the haze of violet from a distance? The herbaceous scent of lavender and the buzz of circling bees up close? I look back at these photos and it’s already a distant memory.

It’s hard to ignore the signs that usher in the next season with such impatience. We smell faintly of sunscreen and salty sweat, even as store windows echo August’s contradictions, quietly trading linen and whites with suede and wool the color of acorns and moss.

Most of all, I sense the slight change between you and me. It’s not anything that anyone else would pick up on because even I can’t put my finger on it. But something has shifted, ever so softly. I know it’s the natural order of things, this pulling away. Independence, the summer of 18 and 21. I can tell when I see that distracted look in your eyes, half here, half wherever you are lost in your thoughts.

We took our first long weekend trip without you because you’d rather spend it with friends and that’s how it should be, but lately it seems that all of your smiles and laughter is reserved for them and them only. Even so, standing on that rock in Maine watching the waves crash against the cliffs like shattering glass, I send you a photo and text you because you would have loved it here. I promise to come back with you one day.

The truth is, we’ve had more time together than I had with my family at your age. I was gone by 18 and never lived at home again, not even in the summers. It makes me feel a little guilty now, like I abandoned my little brother to face the dysfunction alone.

I’m still figuring out how to be a mother to adults and you’re still figuring out how to be one. One foot still in your childhood bedroom, the other already entrenched in a world that spins madder by the day.

In a few days, home will be a little more empty. In two weeks, even emptier still. Makes me feel the gravity of my words when I tell you in a fit of frustration that I think I’m a better parent now from afar. We just know too much about each other’s lives. It’s harder to keep secrets, but sometimes we need a few secrets of our own to protect.

By mid-August, we mentally brace ourselves to say goodbye again. My heart is heavy. I look outside my window and spot the yellow tinge around a few leaves. We abandon the meticulous tending to our balcony garden and let the plants grow wild. They get comically tall and bolt towards the sun to flower with seeds. We’ll harvest them for next spring when it’s planting season again.

Funny how it mirrors this cycle of life we’re on.

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Related reading

The Leaving Years

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Weekly links & recommendations

To read:

• Taking a break from your loved ones might be painful – but it’s the only way to grow (The Guardian)
  Oh, you don’t say?

• Summer of resistance: LA’s visual response to ICE (It’s Nice That)
  War and political conflict have often produced great art. The rally cry of “No Ice” is popping up everywhere in L.A. amid federal immigration raids.

• How Knitting Clubs Became the Least Suspecting Place for Political Change (Teen Vogue)
  Teen Vogue has been doing a series called “Group Project” on the various ways young people are seeking out in-real-life communities. Monthly “stitch and bitches” are a throwback to knitting circles. Makes sense. Knitting has always been intertwined with feminism and wartime activism.

• What's keeping the U.S. from allowing better sunscreens? Products sold in Europe, Japan and South Korea offer more protection from the sun. In the U.S., the key ingredients aren't FDA-approved. (NBC News)
  An article from last May, but relevant given the 15% tariffs slapped onto imports from South Korea. K-beauty fans are stocking up on their favorite sunscreens because sunscreen sold in the U.S from Korean brands are reformulated to meet FDA approval. If you have a friend traveling to South Korea like I do, you can ask them to pick you up a sunscreen haul. But really, why can’t we have better sunscreen?

• Happy Victims: Inside the lives of Tokyo’s most obsessed fashion collectors As Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s cult book is reissued by Apartamento, the Japanese photographer takes us back to the heady days of early 00s fashion. (Dazed Digital)
  I never had the money or desire to collect designer threads, but I do remember the early 00s when I would splurge on a high fashion item once in a while. It was a thrill. I did recently score a $40 Stella McCartney silk dress at a neighborhood thrift store so I guess the thrill of a bargain still holds.

An exhibition worth seeing if you’re in Boston:

• Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home (ICA Watershed)

  

  Years ago, I was introduced to Shiota’s work when I came across a small exhibit at a gallery in Chelsea. Her themes of home, memory, and displacement resonated. Since then, I’ve always wanted to experience one of her large-scale installations, but she typically has only shown in Europe or Asia. “Home Less Home” is her largest show in the U.S. to date.
  
  Seemed like a good enough reason to head to Boston last weekend. In order to get to the Watershed, you have to take a ferry across Boston Harbor. Fun! Like most installations, still photos can’t convey the experience of walking through, so I took a little video for you.

To make and eat:

• Corn salad. All summer long, especially when fresh summer corn is so sweet. There are a ton of recipes like this one with shiso (we have a lot of shiso growing on our balcony), or this Mexican street corn salad. But we like ours best raw, like Bittman’s corn salad with tomatoes, feta, and mint.

To watch:

• This whole timelapse is amazing. The soft bits that she brings to make the nest cozy, the bright yellow baby bird mouths! (ok, the music is over the top). But the end scene when the mother bird returns to see that her chicks have flown the nest—OMG. It just hit me right then what “empty nest” really means. Just stab me in the heart, why don’t you.