Once a summer was lived in an island

6:10
The day has started with 28 degrees Celsius air. Sticky. No wind. The sun is not welcome but already here. Over the T-shirt it begins nibbling at my shoulders. This is summer.

Here is a picture of a summer. It looks very old... It IS very old and exactly the same time as the photo itself gets aged has passed on the people showing. The old lady in the middle passed away long time ago. The grinning boy on the right is over 60 now writing this essay. Can hardly imagine the same person.
In an island off the Miura Peninsula my grandpa had a villa where I would spend my whole childhood summers with my cousins and siblings. My grandma, somewhat witch-looking as is in the picture, was a make-shift mother for all the kids who were ready to enjoy the summer to the dregs. She ruled over us like a queen of a malicious queendom, trying to make our day as regimented as possible; Study in the whole morning, Take a nap after lunch. Never forget to wear a straw hat when going out... Yet all the funs were around us. Fishing, swimming, diving... We invented plays. Courage tests and murderer games were one of the most thrilling among them.
More than 40 years have passed since the last summer I spent there. Still I can hear the splash of water, scream of children, wailing and squawking calls of seagulls, penetrating chorus of cicadas, crackle of firewood burning to heat bath water. The smell of the smoke still lingers in my nostrils. The sight of a night sea flashes back from time to time, glowing blue-white in the pitch blackness every time a wave broke. How I was pleasantly surprised when I knew it was some kind of microbes living in the sea water that gave off the holy lights.
Without knowing, the life was lived. Has been lived. And, in that line, being lived with the fond memories. Memories... How dearly we cherish them! Yet they are illusion all the same.