Edible Memoir

Dear Summer,

Autumn has long held my heart with her crimson-gold promises and sweater-wrapped embraces. And yet, it’s your evenings that haunt me in your absence, that I find myself longing for in deepest of February when the world has forgotten your warmth. Maybe it’s lingering nostalgia from a childhood of wandering summers, (sometimes far from home, sometimes near), or maybe there’s something almost magical about your dusky air when it hangs warm, and your golden hour light that makes absolutely everything look like it belongs in a poem.

Do you remember how we first met? Not here in Seattle where I wait for you every year now, but in all those scattered places across maps. You were different then, sometimes the overwhelming heat at my dad’s place, sometimes that unfamiliar warmth on foreign streets where I’d walk around feeling like a stranger. You were a season of journeys, of transitions, of never quite belonging completely to any one place.

But oh, how magical you become in Seattle. How you transform this corner of the world with your particular alchemy, mountains standing sentinel on clear days, waters turned to rippled sapphire, evenings that refuse to surrender to darkness until the clock insists it must be night. Here, you reveal your most tender self, Summer. Here, you taught me what magic truly means.

As you know, cooking is one of my chosen forms of expression, a love language, if you will. When words fail me, and they often do, I turn to my kitchen. Flour up to my elbows, the rhythmic chop of my knife against the cutting board, the sizzle as ingredients hit a hot pan. That’s how I say the things I can’t put into words. And nowhere does this expression shine more brilliantly than at dinner parties in your evening embrace.

You’ve seen my backyard, it’s nothing extravagant, just concrete and a patch of grass embraced by trees that have weathered countless versions of your visit. String lights crisscross through their lower branches like constellations. You’ve watched me gather chairs and tables from various chapters of my life, arranging them into conversation islands where stories flow between guests like your gentle evening breezes. And when twilight deepens and those lights flicker on, my modest little corner of Seattle transforms into something beyond the ordinary, a place where time moves differently, where distance compresses, where all my scattered summer selves can gather in one place. In these moments, my simple backyard becomes a sanctuary, holding memories of distant summers within its intimate borders. But there’s always been this sweet sadness to your evenings. They remind me of childhood dinners eaten outside, sometimes in Seattle, sometimes elsewhere, where meals stretched toward infinity as adults lingered over their glasses, voices growing softer as the night deepened around them. Now I’m the one creating those lingering moments, those memories that will someday be reflected upon with that exquisite ache of time simultaneously lost and preserved.

And was it your idea, Summer, to create peaches as your messengers? Those velvet-skinned globes warming under your gaze, carrying your essence in their flesh. That sweet, heady fragrance rising to meet you, promising something profound before you’ve taken a single bite. The inevitable surrender as juice traces warm pathways down your wrist no matter how carefully you approach it. The perfect equilibrium of sweetness and brightness.

Your peaches teach us presence, arriving with shy blushes in late June, achieving radiant perfection through July’s heat, reaching by August an almost desperate ripeness. Too beautiful and too temporary, your reminder that, like joy itself, you weren’t designed to last forever but to be consumed completely in your moment.

The bruschetta I create from these grilled treasures, layered with torn basil leaves, pillowy burrata, drizzles of aged balsamic and olive oil pressed from someone else’s memory of you, becomes more than sustenance. It becomes communion with you, Summer. Lifted by hand, eaten without pretense, accepted with understanding that your beauty is often messy. This simple act connects us to your ancient rhythms, the shared human experience of your fleeting abundance.

As night fully claims my Seattle backyard, something transmutes in our gathered circle. Conversations deepen like your shadows, laughter softens into intimacy. The string lights overhead echo distant stars I’ve wished upon from foreign beaches and familiar hills alike. The peach bruschetta has long since vanished, but its essence lingers in the evening air, the perfect beginning to an evening celebrating connection, your generosity, and the simple miracle of finding ourselves in the same place at the same time.

I may crave autumn’s embracing melancholy, with its sweaters and contemplative rains, Summer, but your evenings in my Seattle sanctuary have taught me about a different kind of love, a different kind of wistfulness. The bittersweetness of bare feet on cool grass after warm days, of sharing food made with love and memory, of conversations that meander like your streams, unhurried and life-giving.

When I cook during your precious evenings, I’m gathering all the versions of myself who have known you, the traveling child, the wandering young woman, the Seattle native, and offering them sanctuary in shared nourishment. I’m not just feeding bodies but nurturing connections, creating memories against your inevitable departure, speaking love in the language I trust most. And when my guests take that first bite of grilled peach bruschetta, I know they’ve heard what words alone could never express, that you, Summer, like love, is best when shared, and sweeter for its impermanence.

With bittersweet devotion, An autumn girl that still loves you