In many ways I had an untethered childhood. For the summer months I was a woodland princess, a pirate stranded on a desert island, a pioneer, and a fairy. All of the trees on our two acres of land had names; the pile of glacier-deposited ledge alongside our dirt driveway was Magical Hill.

I ran through the grass, feeling the soft earth under my bare feet. My wild blonde hair, bleached from days in the sun, danced across my shoulders and down my back. My arms and legs were golden brown, a stark contrast to my pale winter skin. I leapt onto our wooden deck, which creaked under my steps, and swung open the screen door. It slammed behind me as it always did. My mom pretended to hate it, but it was the sound of her childhood, too. The hydraulic door closer we got when the door was refinished gathers dust in its packaging, never to be opened. My dad, sitting at the kitchen table looked up from the paper and said quietly “Summer’s child”. I absently smiled and skirted past him.

I have spent 37 summers in this home. Now I return with my two young children, and watch them run wild and barefoot through the grass, picking up sticks and leaves, scraping their knees, and trying to catch fireflies. My dad still sits at the kitchen table, now hunched over and small. I ache as the image of an empty chair shadows my mind.

The screen door slams after my sons, racing wagons and cars back and forth. They stub sandy toes on the warped wooden deck and fall asleep on beach towels as the sun fades from the sky.

When I am here, being an adult seems distant and my young untroubled self ripples forward. I catch my own eye in the mirror, wild blonde hair streaking down my bronzed back. “Summer’s child”, I whisper, and for a moment I remember her; wide-eyed and careless, wasting her days waiting for summer.