Trying to Beat the Heat

If I shut my eyes and feel the heavy humid heat of the day and the bright sun shining on my cheeks I slip seamlessly back to the summer before I turned 17. This was the summer that mattered. It was the summer Chris and I made so many promises to each other. This was the summer before Chris left for Russia for a month. To two 16 year olds a month was a lifetime. We would walk for hours and talk about the future and how we would survive away from each other for so many days. We promised to write letters to each other and to not lose the magic of our young love. I don't remember much else about that summer but he and I. Everyone else was blocked out of our tunnel vision. We did write letters to each other and when he came back we did fall back into our story in the same place we had left off. Now more then 15 years later I look back and remember the all those imaginary plans we had for our hoped for future. Surprisingly so many of them have actually fallen into place. We still talk for hours and we still make plans for our future. I still feel sad when he has to travel and fluttery when he is coming home from a trip. Every time I start to hate the blazing heat of summer I stop and shut my eyes and remember that summer and I find that the place that is the warmest is my heart.