A Convertible Summer

Summer of ’67
British invasion
Canada claiming 100 –
Dad arrives home
in a powder puff
blue convertible.

Back seat sisters
long hair flapping
bellowing along
with 8-track tunes:
Loving Spoonful
“Do you believe in magic?”

I, barely nine
idolizing a sister
sixteen – a model
with go-go boots
and hippie style

Cottaged at Sauble
muscle cars prowling
oiled bodies lounging
and all eyes lit
on sister, and I
wondering at the draw
made castles in the sand.

Surfing the waves
avoiding the baby
whose brash cries
and quick, chubby legs
keep Mom distracted,
I am observer of the life
Neil Diamond is promising:
“Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.”

Ah, to be 9, in summertime
few the cares, and ideas
like popcorn, burst and pop,
forgotten in each watery plunge
still content to be a child.

(A Convertible Summer first appeared here in June of 2018.  I submit this edited version for Eugi’s Causerie Weekly challenge:  summer.  Image my own.)

 

 

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

40 thoughts on “A Convertible Summer”

  3. Pingback: Eugi’s Weekly Prompt “Mighty”, June 29, 2020 – Eugi's Causerie I

  6. What wonderful memories, VJ. Some scary times and lots of good times. I loved the music back then and I agree with bejamin4, I just want to ungrow up! Stunning art and dearly love the poem. Thank you for joining in.

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  7. This really brought back memories, V.J. I was thirteen and my first year in high school. I remember we were assigned in English class to pick a song. provide a copy of the lyrics to the class ( a pain in the neck to transcribe off a record) and analyse the words. My choice was the “Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. It changed my life forever, to dig deeply into the meaning of the lyrics. I started to become more political and followed the Vietnam protests and Robert Kennedy before he was assassinated in 1968, etc. Loved so much of the music that came out in those days. 🙂

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  9. Love this. The weaving of the music I remember so well. As a young teen, the lyrics became solidified in my memory and forever linked with where my head was at. Along with the messages aimed at teens, especially teen girls. Looking back is indeed odd and fascinating at the same time.

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      4. 😀 John Sebastian was opening for Jim Croce, who introduced his set by telling a story of performing in a third-world country in a diaper after contracting dysentary. It was an experience, all right!

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  11. …..me, a year away from receiving: ‘Greeting: You are hereby ordered to report for induction at The U. S. Post Office Building, Glens Falls, N.Y.’ and then resisting the draft–against my parents’ advice–flying to Nova Scotia on my 21st birthday and making an oath to The Queen. I’ve now been a Cdn citizen for 52 yrs, lived in 7 Cdn cities, and so for me, 1967 was a scary, unnerving, year of decision which, in retrospect, I’ve never regretted. Your poem brings back so many memories. Thank you.

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  12. You’re so right. To be a child again … if only we know this when we are children. I think everyday I miss those days a little more, even though at the time all I wanted to do was grow up! Now I just want to ungrow up. I love the poem. Personal but fully relatable.

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