Endless summer

I wake up; it’s 4 in the afternoon. I feel like I’ve been in bed all day. It’s warm, too warm, but I feel good.

In a flashback, I’m back in the beach house in Italy. I’m about 14 years old, lying in bed after a delicious, elaborate lunch made by my grandmother, following a morning of sun, sea, and sand. Sleep, sleep, sleep after eating, as if there’s nothing else, as if I don’t have to do anything. I hear my friends calling, “Nina, Nina, wake up, we’re going to the beach.” Strangely enough, they find it odd that I take a nap after lunch, while they spend that time doing their endless homework, which I fortunately didn’t have to do coming from the Netherlands.

I get up with great effort, sleepwalking down the stairs. I give everyone two kisses, and we walk to the beach. We take a refreshing dip in the sea, play Neapolitan cards, and chat about the boys we like, whose names we’ve disguised as ice cream flavors so it’s less obvious. Summer seems endless, yet it disappears in the blink of an eye.

I wake up, and I’m back here, now in the middle of summer, with the same feeling that everything is okay, that I don’t have to do anything but can do everything.