Post #161 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
It’s June — Our Next Memoir Writing Contest Winner celebrating June
Today, we are pleased to publish the second Honorable Mention winner in our June Memoir Writing Contest. We had a wonderful response from our readers who use our contests to share their storytelling skills. Women’s Memoirs offers our congratulations to Kathleen Hewitt for her story, Salty June Nights.
SALTY JUNE NIGHTS
by Kathleen Hewitt
The salty nights found me in my favorite white dress. It fit me just so, reminding me that I still had a girlish waist. My shoulders were bare and strong; covered in freckles of Junes gone by. The soft cotton hem skimmed my fleshy calves and a faint bleachy smell of freshness moved with me.
A certain resiliency woke me each day, bringing a deep healthy lushness to those early summer sunrises. My heart and soul like new grass grew fearlessly while I slept, strong and able.
Neither drenching rain nor careless foot could trample this new love of mine. No, it would have to be dug up, catching every root, even those that reached into the deep soils we never see.
For months I was uncomfortable around him. It was what happens to the atmosphere when a hot sultry storm is rolling in. There’s no wind and nothing moves. The sky doesn’t know whether to be light or dark. There’s an electric feel to the air; both unsettlingly and anticipatory. A hypnotic humidity. Time seemed to stop.
Time did stop, for me. He overwhelmed me.
I felt young again, this beautiful June, more alive than ever before. I didn’t have to be in charge. A huge weight was lifted from my freckled shoulders. I was swept away for the first time in my life. He gave me back the carefree years of my childhood-the ones I spent being an adult.
Everything I did put a smile on his face. Sometimes his eyes would fill with tears, touched by something between us. He needed me but not as others had. He just wanted to be with me. He needed to love me and he needed to be loved. I gave him all of the love that I had.
He was a gentle, huge man. He touched my June skin all of the time as though he just had to. I would get up on my toes to kiss him as though he was so much taller than I.
He was larger than life.
When I was alone, I’d talk to him as though he were with me. In my mind, we tended to my garden side by side. I told him stories and he leaned back and laughed. I couldn’t have been that funny. But I sure was loved this summer of all of my Junes.
At the end of the day, I wanted nothing more than to lay my head on his chest. He smelled of wood and cedar and pine. I never had the chance. It was over almost before it began.
When he left me, I was broken. I moved through my days in a humid fog, the kind that makes breathing impossible. I cringed when I heard people talk about a broken heart, such a dramatic expression. But my heart was broken and I wanted to die.
I did the next best thing. I crawled into bed each day, very still and barely alive, and thought only of him. No one knew how long this went on. Months went by before I started to live again, or at least try to. So many days were full of doubts where I hated myself for being so open to him, so trusting. But, I had the knowing, deep inside, that we had loved each other. People can love that way. I did. I still do.
About a year after, I dreamt of myself running through a Christmasy village filled with thousands of twinkling, happy lights. Fires were burning in the windows of the sturdy cottages and the street was packed with months’ worth of snow. The sky was star filled and I was warm in my shorts and sneakers. I ran and ran, thinking to myself that I had never run like that. I held a huge burning torch in my hand and I ran in that snow until I finally collapsed into his arms.
I wound my legs around his waist. We did what had always come naturally to us. We’d bring our faces together and just breathe. The silence was our loving connection. I loved this man. I felt I’d known him my whole life. He was a solid and tender reminder of all that I needed.
And each June, I remember this sweet torch and I thank God for the moments. And I pray to once again to stand close to him and share with him the smoldering early summer days of my girlish ways.
