When I was younger, summer break consisted of playing outside all day, dripping red ice pops down my shirts, and drawing my dream house in chalk on the sidewalk. Like all things, the magic of summer break loses itself in responsibilities and the passing of years.
Remembering that time comes in flashes of imagination and the openness of possibility. Some days I was a single mother to my many baby dolls, drawing beds and walls around them, and rocking them to sleep before picking up the next.
On other days I was lost in the jungle, the woods around me seemed never-ending, and I was trudging through the wilderness as an explorer.
The next day I was content to hook up the hose to a new sprinkler and jump back and forth, one side where I flew as a fairy to cross the portal of water and into a mermaid land of scales and magic.
High up on a swing set, I looked over my backyard like a queen seeing her empire. Scratching my knees on the pavement and getting back up, becoming one with the bugs around me, enjoying the sun on my face without thinking of tan lines or wrinkles.
The rose-colored glasses left a scorching view of the summer heat that could only be eased with ice cream from the passing truck, which seemed to rarely come down my street. The bliss of no school and nothing to do but play woke me up each day.
Riding my bike down the boulevard to trade silly bands with my friends from school, and scamming the community with lemonade stands and cookie sales lay blanketed in my mind as I think back on what summer was like in the 2000s.
Images of grass stains and sticky fingers circle my memory, as well as a little girl standing barefoot in a muddy puddle. Just talking to the ants, wishing summer could last forever.
Wrote by Sophia Querrazzi
Pictures shot and edited by Sophia Querrazzi
Models: Gill Schiffer, Brett Brunner, Dillan Dabice