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Every early summer I get daily flashbacks of summers I spent in Austria or Croatia. When it gets humid and sticky I wonder why I live here, why I left a perfectly weather-balanced continent, where it does get hot in summer but shade always offers relief and you can breathe and air conditioning is optional. The painful thing about homesickness is that after years you've been away, memories always come in strong associations and less in specific events. I am thrown into sights, smells and sounds... tiny out-of-body experiences for just a second when I don't expect it. It's over quick but it always comes back. I can't say I'm not grateful for it, too. It's a nice way to visit, even if just in your imagination.

As a child I had two main images of summer, the one without the sea and the one with. In my head the one at the sea was the "real" summer, as everything else could only be a prelude to it or some nice, but obviously second-best option. We spent every summer in Cres, at least a month, sometimes two. So the time before and after Cres I spent at home, going to the local swimming pool and riding my bike. I wouldn't have admitted it then, but I loved that too. I was old enough to go by myself and when you remove all the embarassing and dreadful details of the life of a 12-year-old you remain with images of a perfect life, the minutes of the day spent between eating ice cream, breathing chlorine and feeling the cool breeze on your wet hair. You will understand why that is a good memory to conjure up when your current minutes are spent on laundry, food preparation and explaining to your daughter for the 47th time that in the car you cannot pick up her bag that just fell because it's too far away and you would rather live another day than crash the both of you into the next house.

The other non-sea summer memories are the ones of me staying at my grandparents' house, usually with some cousins. We were hosing ourselves down in the yard when it got hot and chased scared little bunnies and kittens around. I remember the smell of grass, the sound of my grandma's pots while she was cooking and eating berries in the garden. I know I know it all sounds so typical... "Behold, the golden summers of my youth." I don't care though. What else are memories for? They hold me over the rough parts, like a little escape. It helps with... perspective.

Memories for me have the additional dimension of space. I don't live now where I used to live when I was 7 or when I was 12 or when I was 20. None of these places have stayed with me. When I travel in space I often travel in time as well. When you pass the same street corner for 29 years every day, it's hard to make a memory of it, because it's still there, in your life, right now. On the other hand if that street corner was part of your life between 1983 and 1992 only (random years, I'm giving an example), when you come back to it, you will have specific associations. Sometimes I feel like a really old person. You know, when you're around 80 and walking through your neighborhood and saying things like: I remember... here, where this parking lot used to be, that's where we went to church back in 19....."

I miss the cool evenings in Europe. Here sometimes the air seems to have grown roots in summer, it never moves, night or day. I like heat but here it brings you to your knees. I miss the different vegatation and the different smell of the air. Luckily this summer I will get to feel it again.