The Start of Summer
In this series on the summer solstice, which will run every Friday through June 21, Nina MacLaughlin wonders what summer’s made of.
Max Pechstein, Summer in Nidden. 1919-1920
It was early June, Saturday, midmorning on the Red Line. I was moving through tunnels beneath Cambridge when a teenager approached and asked if I wanted to take part in a memory project. Take an index card and a pen and write down a memory, any memory at all, and get one from a stranger in return. I took a card, a pen, and wrote. I handed it to her, and before we reached the next stop she returned and handed me a memory that belonged to another person on the subway car. It was written on an index card folded in half:
On the last night of summer camp, my best friends and
