from "After an Apple Falls From the Tree, There is a Sound"

2009-2016

***

When does summer begin?

Some would say it begins right on the calendar – on the first day of June. No, others might say, this summer began on the day we went to the river for the first time! Or some might answer like this: the first time we found mushrooms, that's for sure! Summer begins the day when the dandelions and the fields of yellow rockets start to blossom, someone else might answer.

But no one actually remembers the beginnings of summer. It will be forgotten, like the premonition of summer rain – the premonition that guides us back to the garden, back home, but always coming only one step too late. And just before escaping the downpour, the rain begins to fall and wets our skin, and we forget what led us there in the first place.

Jumping into the river with the rope swing, searching for treasures, excavating fossils and dinosaurs' bones, fishing, and making campfires... Once you get caught into this whirl of summer adventures, you never come back to where it first began.

The light of all these immense summers fills the windows, the aquarium, hides in the cellar and under the roof. And one day, when someone finds the memories of these endless summer days and lets them free, a new summer begins again.

©︎ Elena Tutatchikova 2023