CHAPTER 8

SUMMER SWEETS

APRIL AND EARLY MAY ARE A SLOW CLIMB IN THE MIDWEST, A meteorological tug-of-war not completely unlike tearing a Band-Aid off hair by hair. When you have three different jackets out and two pairs of boots, plus maybe a pair of sandals because of that one weird Thursday where it was 75°F and then snowed overnight, it can be a little demoralizing.

But if you can hang on, in comes the glory of midwestern June. The air sings, the color of the sky is like the fictional flavor of blue raspberry. The trees transform from skeletal, splintered frameworks into heroic, vibrant green salads on trunks. There is a mere suggestion of humidity, glorious for human skin and hair, but not mid-August peanut butter air.

All at once, June hits me in the face and the heart. One deep inhale while driving with the windows down right around Memorial Day, and my brains flips back through summer memories like a rigid stack of Polaroids, snap snap snap snap.

June here feels like a cleansing, a freedom, busting out of a race track gate. It exhales cut grass, wet Popsicle sticks, a little bit of Freon, and coppery water from a lawn sprinkler. June runs like a long gravel road with tall grass on either side, unfurling into two and a half beautiful, school-free months. Whether I think back ten or thirty-five midwestern summers ago, the sensation is the same. In January, it’s a feeling best described as the distant familiar.

The sweets I suddenly crave in early summer fall right in line with those memories—frozen custard, fruit salads (some of them quite kitschy), creamy no-bake desserts, gleaming and quivering gelatins. While I suppose any of these can be enjoyed year-round, it’s a perfect fit June through August.

In California, June didn’t come in this way—the air is different, the scenery literally evergreen. The distant familiar of an Illinois summer is hard to access when you’ve gone so long without it. But the seasonal turnover here is powerful, and I’m so glad that it—and the recipes that come along with it—are part of the rhythm of our life again. In fact, it’s nearly June right now, as I write this. It’s so good to be home, you guys.