It’s Summer When a Girl’s Fancy Turns to Thoughts of . . .

There’s almost no better feeling in the world (except a hot shower after being on a boat for a week) than having a crush in a fledgling relationship that coincides with the onset of summer. The night air is soft and warm, and it smells wonderful. And there remains that anticipatory feeling, 20 years after it is relevant, that exams have just ended, and in the two months ahead, something wonderful might happen.

Of my handful of meaningful relationships over the years, more than half of them began as spring wended its way into summer. It’s no coincidence – with flowering plants thrusting their sexuality out there for all to see, mammals and insects doing various mating dances, the air is fairly charged with hormones from every species.

With nature helping a girl along, it has been easy in the past to fall fast into the sticky depths of a relationship. The loamy smell of a spring rain will always remind me of walking downtown at age 16 to meet a boy I thought I loved. It is a reminder to exercise caution, for he did not love me back, and furthermore, he would have been a terrible boyfriend. But the scent also stirs up the already overwhelming love I have for my children, my friends, my parents and sibling until it is once again pouring out of me in a veritable flood that makes the wary leap back so their feet aren’t covered; nor is the sand underneath them shifted by the tide.