SUMMER MERMAIDS
By Danielle Childers
There’s a day every spring when the sun shines so bright you can smell swimming season around the corner. You know it’s too early for a dip to be anything more than ice cold, but oh, what you would give to lay next to the water and pretend it’s really, really summer.
In my family, this day meant we were about to have cousin camp, a really intense week with my very large, very loud Texan family. We’d wake up with Jesus before dawn and drive to the family lake house at Possum Kingdom. My very roughened Texan grandfather would carefully paint sunscreen on our faces to look like Indian war paint. If a mom didn’t catch you to rub it in, you could spend the summer looking like a wild child from the hill country with stripes over your brows and dots high on your cheekbones .
We’d spend our days bathing in the lake, scaring each other with tales of alligator gars beneath the surface, and jumping off the cliffs. We’d eat watermelon from an uncle’s pocket knife and keep an eye out for scorpions in the grass my Papa cut so thick you could walk on it without ever feeling the ground. At night, my grandmother would walk down the extensive row of grandchildren and drop rubbing alcohol into our ears. At her command, we’d turn en masse so she could get the other side. Then we’d watch The Karate Kid. Every single summer.
When I really need to feel the day that starts the summer and the swimming, I read ALICE AT HEART. It’s magical realism at its best. Right between Sarah Addison Allen’s GARDEN SPELLS and Susanna Kearsley’s THE WINTER SEA, before Alice Hoffman’s THE RED GARDEN.
ALICE AT HEART is one of my favorite books, and I’m pretty sure it’s true. After all, we’ve all been summer mermaids.
I’ve been championing this book forever, and today Amazon Kindle is too! Get it for $1.99!!!
