Summer of ‘69
I’m starting my senior year in about a month, and I have been thinking about the past three years in high school. Ever since COVID, it feels like time passes quicker, and I barely have enough time to value the memories I make while making them. I feel like only recently, I was sitting on a trampoline at my friend Eyla’s house, third-wheeling her and her boyfriend while I distracted myself by reposting images of Damon from The Vampire Diaries on my story for my whole school to see. Looking back on it, I can see how much time has passed and how much I have changed (Eyla and her boyfriend broke up three years ago after a whole two weeks of dating, and now I would never be caught dead reposting anything on my story, let alone an image of a shirtless fictional character from a show about vampires).
Now that I am entering my senior year, I am realizing all of the people I thought of as my senior friends will now be freshmen in college hundreds of miles away. I didn’t know it was the little moments that end up feeling like such big absences, but it’s not all prom dresses and graduation parties. I miss my friend Ella most at the grocery store. Last year, I’d sneak into the back of Rufus, her little red Volkswagen, to get lunch at our local market, and on the way there, we’d bond over Hozier’s lyrics and chat about how we wanted to be loved the way Hozier loves. We would get into deep conversations about what we wished we had, which were valuable to me, but what I remember the most is our daily listening session of “Partition” by Beyonce. We would sit, blasting “Partition” on the way back to school, copying Zendaya’s dance moves to the song, and stumbling over the French words that close out the song, pretending we knew what they meant. It’s only just now occurring to me that it will probably be a long time before I can do that again with her. It came on last weekend on my way to a soccer tournament, and I couldn’t get past “Let me hear you say hey, Miss Carter” before I skipped the song. I pulled out my phone to text her, “I can’t listen to ‘Partition’ now that you’re gone,” and that’s how I retired one of the greatest songs of the 21st century so far.
You might have thought I would have seen this coming, because last year Ella and I performed “Summer of ‘69” together in Rock Band. Ella played guitar on the song while we sang along to the verses about getting a guitar for the first time and joining a band with your friends just for everyone to scatter and eventually lose touch. I understood the lyrics, but nostalgia didn’t apply to me yet. How could it? Our summer that seemed to last forever hadn’t even started yet.
But the summer did start, and Ella left for college, and now summer is ending and my senior year is almost here. You can’t keep the present from happening. For example, I’m already stressed about my senior portraits and the senior superlatives my now-junior friends will be making (they have vowed to use the image of me with a half-shaved head). While keeping my grades up and keeping that photo out of the yearbook are my top priorities, my friends are a close second. Everyone is focusing on their college apps or transitioning into freshman year of college, which isn’t exactly “Jimmy quit, Jodie got married,” but it does feel like people have already started to go their separate ways. This is why I am so focused on making memories — we won’t be in close proximity forever. It’s strange to think that in a couple of years, I will be a part of someone's nostalgia over their high school experience, but even if the best days of our lives can’t last forever, I can at least make sure they’re worth remembering.
