Summer, looking back

But maybe taste is presence, the only sure way besides the burst of green and sand and afternoon rains that a season is really here.

The first taste of summer ran down my fingers and dripped across my chin as I plopped one ripe strawberry after another into my mouth, the car still in idle next to the roadside farmstand. Between my mom and me, we finished the whole pint. The first week of June spent in Hudson with my parents launched me into a kaleidoscopic expectation of how my summer would taste: cherry labne ice cream scoops and freshly shaved jambon over ribbons of musky gouda, crisp radicchio lettuces cutting through a maybe-too-sweet vinaigrette. The farmer’s markets stocked with jams and honeys and overflowing with flowers and pies. We stuffed ourselves, welcoming summer, how green, sweet, and crisp it all could taste.

How sticky was the strawberry juice that clung to my chin in the parking lot, and just how bitter was the radicchio I ate with my hands straight from the mixing bowl? Craving these tastes while sliding into my winter boots in January, my expectations were saturated and sky high, and now looking back, the wilting chill of autumn moving across the horizon, they’re salty/sweet to the nth degree. Surely nothing could taste as rich as the roadside soft serve, chocolate-dipped, and gone in seconds. No snap pea could taste as candied and bright as the ones I ate raw over the kitchen sink in June.

Maybe this winter I’ll remember the real taste of warm lobster rolls by the lighthouse when I come up the stairs at Bergen Street, the wind whipping my scarf away, my bag slipping off the shoulder of my puffer jacket for the eightieth time that night. It’s possible by March, thwarted to the brink of insanity by the teasing promise of spring, that I’ll recall the actual taste of ripe cantaloupe on the beach and the slow burn of the sun on the parts of my back I couldn’t reach myself with sunscreen.

But maybe taste is presence, the only sure way besides the burst of green and sand and afternoon rains that a season is really here. That the cloying taste of a ripe peach in the middle of February is an internal ache for a season to pass, even if the peach never tasted that sweet to begin with. Now I can't tell you exactly how delicious a squash might taste this August. I’m too busy grieving all the days I never made it to the park with the sun going down and a ripe nectarine in the bottom of my bag. But come November we can roast a squash or two and look forward to another July, recalling the taste of melon.