I’m coming in right under the wire. Tomorrow, it will be July. July is my month. I was born in July. As a kid, May and June always felt like the prologue to July. I was recently describing to C what the time leading up to July used to feel like. It felt like it was finally warm. My extended family began to get together. In May, we would play outside in the damp, stomping around in the mud and driving golf carts (my Uncle has a golf carts guy so they were around … a lot when I was young) through sinking pathways in the woods. In June, the adults would emerge with cold beer and frozen hamburgers and we would play baseball with uncles of cousins whose names we didn’t know, catch fireflies, imagine the summer days when we could stay out all night long. July was my December, it marked the end of another year of my life and the beginning of another.

This year, May was cold. June came fast and hot. And summer in New York City always feels different. The air smells like trash that’s been placed in an oven. You see a firefly and think “Oh no, he’s lost.” Though it is still a joy. I am looking forward to the chlorine of the public pool, the moment of sweat on the train platform just before stepping into an air conditioned car, the basil and citrus and bar trivia in small backyards.