Allison McClain Merrill
part one, fall:
Here in Southeast Michigan, the air was crisp this morning. I looked out my window to see trees with new splashes of red. I put on a corduroy jumpsuit and a denim jacket. I enjoyed a Zoom call for a book I am writing about Disney Channel. Now I’m sitting at a bookstore-coffee shop to finish a story I started months ago, before I turned 30.
I recently read the Summer I Turned Pretty books by jenny han for the first time. Protagonist Belly Conklin has grown up spending summers at a beach house with a boy she’s fallen in love with, Conrad. We see snapshots of her younger years and the depth of these summers in the books and TV adaptation, tracing her connection to Conrad and his brother jeremiah. The series doesn’t take place merely in the summer but stretches across belly’s young adulthood even as those magical beach house days fade.
part two, summers then:
Though i didn’t read han’s work as a teenager, i would pack several other paperbacks to read at my grandparents’ house every summer: occasionally a sarah dessen book; summer reading for school (i sat in my favorite spot in the piano room to read wide sargasso sea); and numerous faith-based books about a girl named christy miller and her friends in california.
it was easy to get lost in a book during those precious summers between years of high school. Like my reading material, my music was a mix of Christian and mainstream, Barlowgirl and Selena Gomez. Summers at 16 and 17 were colored with ideas about love and God and literature and teen pop.
part three, summer present-ish
“It’s not so bad to tell people I’m 30 when they ask my age,” i wrote sometime last year, attempting to pontificate on that turning point. I did some research on the shift from 29 to 30 and read about searching for meaning when one decade of life concludes and another begins.
having a birthday in the middle of the summer means that 2024 was the summer i turned 30, and 2025 is the last summer that i will be 30.
I couldn’t force some fairytale, “I’m 30 now,” story. That’s why I returned to my thoughts during the fall and again now, on a cloudy summer day. I look out the window and see cardinals and robins come and go. I decided years ago that I’d eventually strive to identify birds as I saw them… An arbitrary notion, but one that is becoming more realistic and pleasant now.
i went on my first birdwatching walk with friends recently. I’d like to think I’m continuing a family tradition of sorts with this hobby. Though my grandfather passed away in 2019, bluebirds have since returned to the houses he built for them, where they start their families and care for their babies.
It feels strange sometimes to see how quickly life moves. I won’t get to be 17 or 25 or 29 again. But for every life stage that introduced a new favorite song or career goal or realization or hobby, I am grateful. Ideas that begin in one place and time can become echoes or guiding lights for years to come, reminding us to look back at the moments that helped us move forward.
The summer I turned 30, dreams were within reach. A publisher bought my Disney Channel book project, I was accepted as a mentee in a travel journalism program, and a professional choir tour took me on my second trip to England.
this is the summer i will turn 31. Almost everything I’m doing now is an extension of my own dream, and I’m (mostly) doing a good job to care for my mental and physical health to power all my plans. I volunteer with teens who make the next step clear: generating ideas and taking action to make life better for the people around us during such a scary time in American history. Thirteen or 31, we can share the same hopes for a brighter future.
in the words of Hilary Duff, “Well, that’s my life. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I hope you enjoyed it, because I know I did.” And hey, age 31: see you in less than two weeks.
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