What does summertime mean to you?

To celebrate our Summertime issue for Black voices, contributor Helena Baptiste shared what summer means to her:

Ah, southern summers are crispy hell. There is no quarter from the sun. So many shade trees, so little shade. Humidity that makes you catch your breath like the sight of your first love. Everyone getting kissed by a fickle sun or burned, sometimes both. Hair getting sun-bleached and fried and your just-came-from-the-salon hairdid getting sweated out or splashed on in the community swimming pool where your whole objective was to get seen and not wet. Playing Red Light/Green Light with your friends amidst twinkling fireflies and lovestruck mosquitoes nearly as big and hoping your best friend will pretend she didn’t see you move. Evenings spent on the back porch eating watermelon, playing Jacks and telling lies. Washing each other’s hair with Lemon Up shampoo and rinsing it with the water hose. Drinking from it too. Your most-fun aunt teaching you the dances from Soul Train and some she just made up. Your cousins inviting you to their house to play paper dolls and you politely declining because quite frankly, you’re damn sick of their lifetime collection of tattered paper dolls—heads nearly decapitated, limbs barely hanging on all jammed to the top of their closet. Somebody frying chicken because somebody always has to be frying chicken. ICEEs, snow cones, Co-Colas, RCs and Pepsis with ice when you can afford them. A tall, sweating glass of ice water when you can’t. Cookouts with your family with the men taming the meat (potato salad is women’s work). And please, please, please, nobody dare turn the hot-ass oven on. Watching the sun come up because you stayed up all night reading. The sky opening like a newborn infant's eyes and your neighbor’s yard bird blowing Reveille. The honeysuckle scent of fresh morning dew through your open window and the citrus fragrance of freshly applied Maybelline Big Stick orange lip balm on your lips and no matter what fresh hell the day brings (and it will) you at least have this. For a moment you have all this.