Perfect summer.

We probably all have happy times that in slow moments or quiet nights we can reflect on, most are just pictures in your mind from slices of time that have no real order. They lie in a jumbled heap along with all the other memories good and bad that we accumulate as we walk through life. But there are some that have the power to enable us to live again the feelings, and emotions that stamped them so indelibly in our minds.

For me it was my perfect summer, I was fourteen years old and full of expectation for the future that then seemed light years in front of me and promised everything. Some of my expectations were realised, some not, but my only regret is that we can’t go back. I remember our little gang sitting on the bridge that spanned Gore brook late into the night watching the sky turn slowly from gold to blue. Chatting about everything and nothing, and I can still smell the new mown grass carried on a warm breeze from the park, I remember how our voices echoed on that bridge and seemed to give them more importance.

The days were lazy, and the nights long and full of youthful adventure, it was a time to joke and show off to fresh faced girls who laughed just because it felt good. It was then I found and lost my first real girlfriend. It was then as the summer wore toward winter that I had my first experience with a woman older than I. Who careful of my youth took me on a journey with great care and gentleness. And then when our journey was over displayed the same care and gentleness when it was time to say goodbye.

It was a time when the relationship between my Father and I changed, that summer he looked at me in a different way, he taught me all that I know about life and people, all that has passed has just been a verification of his words. That summer seemed to last for ever, and I can’t remember its end, I suppose it never will as long as it remains a happy time in my mind, and I can go back to it in slow moments or quiet nights. That perfect summer all those years ago.