“The Summer of 1980”

"Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,"

An Akan proverb that says,

“It is not wrong to go back and retrieve what has been forgotten”

It is a journey into the past,

into lives once lived, today forgotten

Histories once rich,

their moral fabric, now tattered, dispersed across time

It is the summer of 2025.

Children splashing in the murky pool waters

Bodies glisten in the sun,

hourglass women and sculpted men,

Sculpted by whom? God? Dumbbell? Scalpel?

These days, it’s hard to tell

And then, there’s us,

wrinkled and shriveled, plagued by thoughts of our final years

Laid out on blue-striped lounge chairs,

Our sunscreen thick as paint, yet our skin remains indifferent

Wrinkles and sunburns hide beneath colorful beach towels and silent retrospection.

A sudden flash of light.

It is the summer of 1980.

And I am young again.

The chattering and splashing is music to my ears

My body is tanned and taut,

no thoughts of final years now.

Friends gather, laughter abounds

The air is heavy with burnt hotdogs,

specks of sand blown by the wind.

The eerie doom of the future unknown, is a concern for the distant winter days

The summer of 1980,

culture, tradition, community.

We loved aloud, we cared, we shared and danced till the sun crawled its way East

The music was good.

The movies? Classic.

Ah! The good old days,

Truly, The good old days.

When ice cream cost cents

When groceries cost less than a day’s wage

When we sat around fires,

told stories passed down from ancestors long gone

Theaters filled to the brim, popcorn flying overhead

Couples wandering hand-in-hand,

perhaps a romantic Ferris wheel ride to crown the night?

Your rickety car’s window crank,

gave your biceps a much needed workout

Wind in your hair,

huge billboards made for an interesting ride.

Then again, the summer of 2025.

Ah, the familiar sound of the lifeguard’s whistle

“Stay out of the deep end!,”

the unperturbed 10-year old ignores.

Mothers scream, infants wail

Bored fathers sneak glances at bikini-clad women

Teen girls scrolling away,

choreographing TikToks in hopes of validation.

The never-ending rat race,

burnt out dads, mothers stretched thin,

overworked managers, underpaid employees.

Giant corporations scrambling for billions,

like red-eyed vultures,

feeding on the dangling, exhausted flesh of humanity

Endangered species fade,

Sacred lands destroyed by greed.

Wheezing lungs and failing organs pay the price of carcinogenic emissions and oil spills

Is that a dark cloud or a factory pumping some nameless fume into the sky?

These days, it’s hard to tell

The reverberations of the past still echo through my veins,

like the sustained notes of a diminished chord from an out-of tune piano.

When you have lived across time,

the sweetness and evils of the past,

the sweetness and evils of the future

With one foot in the past,

another foot in the present,

a third foot in the future,

what do you hold on to, what do you let go?

Millennial, Boomer, Gen-Z,

Twisted and chaotic, the past and future blurs.

Maybe it’s okay

for the bones of the past to stay buried,

underneath the fancy franchises that replaced your favorite antique store.

For even the summer of 1980 harbors its own darkness untold

With the good comes the bad,

with the bad comes the good.

The shadows of past lives lived

Now faint in our memories

We hold on to the good we can

in this dark, perverse world

And we wish for our children,

the serenity we once knew.

Ah, it is the summer of 2025.

By; Marcia Edinam Vormawor.