The summer solstice passed nine days ago, and yet it didn't feel like summer to me until this week, with three days that were so hot that I carried a bottle of water with me in the car just to go to the grocery store (it's a ten-minute trip).
The kids are at summer day camp, and they picked this week, out of sheer luck, to have their "Swim Week" theme. Three days of outdoor swimming at various water parks. My youngest picked up a sunburn on the first day, another herald of true summer for me. It just doesn't feel like the season yet until that familiar sting of roasted flesh zaps me between the shoulder blades or whenever I wrinkle the skin of my nose. Yes, I know sunburns are bad. My family carries 50+ SPF sunscreen and uses it liberally. The camp counselors couldn't get my youngest to get out of the water enough the first day to be able to slather him with enough lotion, so he got burnt on the shoulders. But the next day he was out every fifteen minutes for more, so his sunburn didn't get worse. I've also been covering him with aloe after-sun gel when he gets home, which he loves. Hopefully he won't be leaving little bits of skin all over when the burn begins to peel.
I am amazed at what my sister and I did as teenagers, when going to the beach. First of all, thirty years ago (ouch) there was no SPF 50+. I think I remember the top SPF at 10. Maybe 15 in the latter part of the 80's. But did we use that? Oh hell no. 10 was for rookies. I remember buying a mahogany-colored translucent bottle of "deep tanning oil". SPF? A mere 2. Nothing to get in the way of a good, dark tan. This stuff was oil. No whiteness to it at all. It was like rubbing the cooking oil on a turkey before shoving it into a roasting hot oven. And we roasted, oh yes.
We never got sunburns bad enough to blister, but they were definitely pink to red, and warm water on it made it sting like crazy. Aloe gel was nice and soothing, and so was Noxema cream. And then came the peeling. The trick was to see who could get the longest unbroken strip off themselves before it ripped. Gross right? It should have been, but it had the same fascination for us as covering your hands in a thin layer of glue, letting it dry, and then peeling that off (What? You've never done that? You missed out).
I never remember burning as a kid. Maybe once, when I was six. And it was pink for a day, then turned brown. As kids we were brown before the summer was a week old. And not even a blush of pink the rest of the summer. As I got older, I noticed I burned more, and worse. So the SPF rating began to climb on the lotions I bought, until now I use SPF 50+, and reapply it often if I'm out for long. Has the sun gotten brighter? Hotter? I don't think so, although some might argue with me. My theory is that, as kids, we were in and out of the house constantly as soon as it was warm enough. I was 12 before the video game craze really started, so I had years of entertaining myself outdoors before the lure of a candy-colored screen and a difficult level kept me in. This constant inside-outside (Stop slamming the screen door! Stay in or out!) allowed my skin, and that of my sister and cousins, to slowly acclimate and darken, so that little sunscreen was necessary unless we were spending a day at the beach. Even then we only needed SPF 6 or 8.
I imagine my string of mid-level sunburns will come to haunt me some day, making me regret that ridiculous deep tanning oil. But I will forever associate that familiar sting with true summer, even as I try to never feel it again.
Summer summer summer....
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