Pure Life Development Atenas Costa Rica

Sunday Reflections | The Taste, Sound, and Smell of Summer

The other afternoon, after I had finished cutting the grass, I was sitting on the front porch while Gerardo made me a glass of iced tea. The clanging of the ice as it hit the glass. The crackling sound of the warm tea meeting the cold ice. The smell of freshly cut grass. The sight of rain clouds building and the distant sound of thunder.

A gust of breeze swept across the lawn with an underlying chill — the kind that arrives when the rains begin drifting down out of the mountains.

I walked through the garden and picked a mango from the tree, slicing it open and enjoying the sweet flesh as the juice rolled down my arm. The wildflower garden had fully sprouted, each seedling stretching toward the sky. The smell of beef short ribs roasting in the oven drifted through the screen door, mixing with the sweetness of my iced tea.

Then, a nearby crash of lightning announced with vibrato the arrival of a tropical downpour.

For me, these are the tastes, sounds, and smells of summer. Now and of my childhood.

I couldn’t resist walking out into the yard, allowing the summer rain to soak my body just as I had done as a young boy back in Riverview.

The place has changed. The boy is now a man.

But some things remain untouched by time.

The freshness of summer rain. The smell of freshly cut grass. The sound of thunder in the distance. The taste of sweet tea over ice.

And for a brief moment, standing there as the heavens opened, I was both people at once.