Losing Summer

 

#NonFashionBlogpost

As I look out of the large, spotless window of the waiting room at the hospital, I feel her presence. She smelled like clay and flowers, with the former almost always overpowering the latter. Though Summer seemed too busy for a 10-year-old, she was beside me whenever I needed her, rain or shine. After trying to find her for months, I finally saw her in my dream last night. She was wearing a white sundress with embroidered hem. She was looking in my direction, but her eyes passed through me as if I didn’t exist. In my dream, the roles were reversed; for once, she was real, and I the invisible friend.

Summer saw something and started walking towards it. She was only walking, but I could not catch up with her. We both saw an old, grey house with purple and black flowers in the garden outside. A white cat came out of nowhere and before I knew it, Summer was chasing the cat, running from the rows of the hedges to the stairs to the porch and then into the house. The main door of the house closed on its own. Sitting on the porch, I waited for her to come out. I now wonder why I didn’t knock even once or assumed the door was locked in the first place. I guess people react differently in their dreams.

‘Mam, you are next.’ My eyes move from the window and rest on to the nurse at the reception. It looks like she had been trying to get my attention for a while, but she is far from irritated. A medium-built woman with black hair, a mole on her left forehead, and a pair of kind eyes. I guess staff at psychiatric hospitals are used to delayed responses from patients because she is almost happy to open the door to the doctor’s room for me.

‘How do you feel?’ In the last two years of my treatment, Dr. Seth had never asked me this question. If he did, I have no recollection of it. ‘I am okay, I guess. Haven’t seen her in a while.’

‘So, no episodes in the last six months?’

‘None.’

‘Let’s see what we have here,’ Dr. Seth looks at the form that I filled an hour ago. ‘Eating well, medication on time, evening walks, sleeping on time; all check. That’s remarkable June,’ he says. I feign a smile. That four-page, duly filled-in form is a testament to the fact that I am doing fine.

Walking back from the hospital, I stop at the flower shop and buy five stems of Calla Lilies for my mother. It would cheer her up, I know. I walk six blocks and then take a right. For a while, I just follow people who are back from their office lunch break. And then I sense I missed something at the corner. Hearing my rapid heartbeat in my ears, I walk back, my boots clicking hard. I feel it has happened before, the sense of missing something, the palpitations, the blur. I bump on a pole. Feeling dizzy, I find a bench to sit down on. One of my knees has taken the brunt of my stupid chase. It is a minor bruise. But my eyes well up and I know why. It all comes to me. The bruise reminds me of playing for hours with Summer.

Summer and I first met over a Christmas dinner. I was 12. All my uncles and aunts were present along with my noisy cousins. She sat right across the table, smiling at me. When I didn’t react, she started making funny faces. Somehow, my mother and Summer were always at odds with each other. My mother wanted my food finished in ten minutes. ‘Don’t eat if you don’t want to,’ Summer said. My mother asked me to make friends, Summer kept me busy. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely Summer’s fault. My classmates were people I rarely understood, with interests that seldom fascinated me.

Mindy however, stood out from the rest. She wore baggy clothes, always had a pile of books in her bag, mostly kept to herself, and yet had a friendly demeanor. We didn’t talk every day, but when we did, we discussed books, movies, dissected characters for each other, and found funny songs as background music for certain scenes. The beginnings, the choice of names, the ideologies, the high points, the ending, everything was discussed. ‘If Holden Caulfield was a girl, he wouldn’t have been that clueless,’ Mindy once said. Before one of the winter breaks, I gave Mindy an old, yellowing ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, one of the dozen books my father had bought for me. In a way, we were tight, Mindy and I.

So I couldn’t believe it was Mindy who told my mother about Summer. That double-faced bitch, I thought. What followed was the worst. My mother never left me alone. I was taken to one doctor after another, chaperoned to almost everywhere. My mother started leaving me more often at her brother Jim’s place. Summer asked me not to go. ‘Why don’t you just run away like Holden?’ With my mother’s watchful eyes hovering, I could not reply.

Summer held my hand throughout the car journey to Uncle Jim’s place. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I protested faintly.

‘Why?’

I didn’t say a word. It is funny how most children give up on their parents so soon, how fear and shame dictate us in ways we don’t realise for the longest time.

Upon reaching his place, my mother and Uncle Jim exchanged pleasantries, and she told him he was the best. ‘You know I wouldn’t have to work so hard if June’s father was alive,’ she said every time she left me there.

I pick my Calla Lilies, fix the crease on my coat, pull up my glasses, and begin walking again. I am 22 now. In the last six months, I have lost weight, my 10X10 vision, and Summer. What I couldn’t admit to Dr. Seth in that clinic was that Summer was more than a friend to me. True, she was the beginning of a journey away from normalcy, I lost a couple of good school years. But she made me face the worst and yet not lose the stories in my head or the songs in my heart.

After I meet my mother today, I have a dinner planned with Mindy who is helping me find a place for myself near my university. I see another corner, this time I have to take a left. I have this sinking feeling that if I take a left, I will lose Summer forever. The memories of running around, carefree will be gone. No one will hold my hand when the going gets tough. I will be alone for real.

It gets windy. I get a whiff of warm lasagna from a nearby Italian place that I cannot see yet. Mindy and I are supposed to have Italian food for dinner today. My stomach growls. Not sure if it is the hunger, or the pain from the minor bruise, or the prospect of bringing a smile to my mother’s face, I clutch my bag, take a deep breath, look at my watch, and turn left.

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