The Summer We Grew Up - Julia Ruth Smith
One of the Top 24 submissions in our 2022 Urban Tree Festival writing competition.
The Summer We Grew Up
The door came with a key, which opened on shady arches, which led to a garden so secret that all of us gasped. In the garden was a fig tree that spat sweetness onto the earth and cats mewled around. Heat slammed in our faces on days when windows didn’t close.
Walls were falling, fruit sun-glowing. There was no outside; just noise from lives overlooking; pots and pans thwacking, bones cracking on terrible mornings, love, then siesta silence.
When the heat got hottest we downed water like stray dogs and felt the difference. We lost the grime of the streets. There were scratches on inner arms, flesh torn and bloody; fighting fit; lifting bundles and brambles; squirting citrus; Adam’s apples gulping.
Sometimes Jo sang lyrical beauty from back streets; it seemed just right. We longed for our best girls, dancing in beach bars but we were growing; sweating our August away; making room in our pockets for cash; too tired at the day’s end for roaming.
When it was finished and everything done, it was missing only a fountain to whoosh it to life. It was green, oh so perfect behind that sturdy old door; if I say we felt bad as we locked it behind us, it’s because it was the only peace we’d ever known.
Julia Ruth Smith
Julia Ruth Smith is a mother, teacher and writer. She lives by the sea in the South of Italy where she's never far from an olive tree.
