A Midwest Summer

Just Add Water

Jun 25, 2026

I’ve been away for a while.

Life got loud in the way it sometimes does, and the words just weren’t there. This piece has been sitting in my drafts since April, written, loved, ready, and the timing never felt right until now.

To everyone who checked in during the quiet: thank you! More than you know. I felt every single one of those messages and I’ll be back when I have more to say.

In the meantime, it’s summer. And this one’s been waiting…..

I am craving a Midwest summer.

Not just warm weather. Not just patio cocktails.

The real thing!

The kind that smells like lake water and gasoline. The kind where your hair is never fully dry. The kind where time loosens its grip on you.

The second the weather truly breaks, not the fake April optimism, but the kind where the air finally softens, something flips on in my brain.

A checklist begins….

Swim. Sun. Boat. Float. New swimsuit. New cover-up. Sunblock (applied with confidence, not accuracy). Ice cream. Cocktails. Souvenir sweatshirt from a town with one stoplight. Repeat until further notice.

Born and raised Midwest girlie here. Which means as soon as we’re released from winter hibernation, we migrate toward water like it’s ancestral.

Lake. River. Pond. Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri. I’m not particular.

Get me near a dock and I become spiritually amphibious.

And here’s the thing that feels impossible to explain unless you’ve lived it:

The smell.

Lake water and a boat motor.

It is not a luxury scent. It will never be bottled and sold at Sephora. And yet it is one of my favorite smells in the world.

Because that smell meant my grandpa’s gold sparkly boat being eased out of the marina and lowered into the water. My dad’s speedboat. The pontoon. The jet skis. It meant the engine turning over. It meant a sun-drenched day was waiting for us.

Swimming until our fingers wrinkled. Laughing too loud. Snacks from a cooler that somehow tasted better on the water.

Someone bartending between swims, because there is always someone who bartends between swims. A roadie for the non-drivers. Drinks that somehow taste better out here than they ever would at an actual bar, and you’re pretty sure it has nothing to do with the recipe.

Sunburns we optimistically called “a base.”

My family has always had a boat. Which means most of my childhood memories come with a shoreline.

And for that, for the dock splinters, the life jackets, the gas money, the early mornings loading the boat before we were even fully awake, I am endlessly grateful.

To my grandparents and my parents: you didn’t just give us summers. You gave us rhythm. You gave us rituals. You gave us a place to return to. You built something we didn’t even realize was being built.

And to the friends who kept showing up, with extra towels, extra energy, sunscreen they were willing to share, and zero complaints about the drive, you’re woven into every single one of these memories. You’re in this too.

We didn’t know then what we were making. We just knew it felt like exactly where we were supposed to be.

Swimming. Music drifting across the water. Coolers that always had exactly what we needed.

As we got older, maybe a cocktail replaced the juice box.

But the formula stayed the same:

Water + people + time.

And now?

Now we’re the adults.

Now we’re the ones making sure the snacks don’t run out. We’re the ones slathering on sunblock, double-checking life jackets, tossing extra towels in the trunk. We make sure our kids stay in the water until their fingers wrinkle. We make sure they’re exhausted in that specific, sun-drenched way that guarantees they’ll fall asleep before we even leave the driveway.

We watch the cycle repeat in real time.

We hear their laughter echo across the same water that once held ours.

And there’s something sacred about that.

Because it’s no longer just nostalgia.

It’s stewardship.

It’s making sure the connection doesn’t fade with us.

There is nothing like a full day on the water.

A little too much sun. Hair stiff from water. Skin warm and slightly pink.

You shower. You put on clean clothes. And suddenly you feel prettier. Not because you tried, but because you lived all day.

Then dinner.

Maybe burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Or maybe a supper club. Relish trays. Warm bread. Low lighting. The faint scent of a grasshopper cocktail. Someone’s telling the same story they told last summer, and we laugh anyway.

And at night?

A bonfire.

Your skin still hot from the day. The fire somehow both too warm and exactly right. Someone makes s’mores. Someone plays music. Someone brings up a story from ten summers ago and suddenly you’re all there again, younger, louder, invincible.

When we were kids, it felt like the days would never end.

Now I understand they didn’t.

That’s the ache.

Midwest summer isn’t flashy. It isn’t curated. It’s floating in the “diaper.” It’s ice cream at the local shop where the line wraps around the building and no one checks their watch. It’s souvenir sweatshirts that feel like trophies. It’s taking old-time photos on a rainy afternoon, corsets, feather boas, sheriff badges, and sepia prints you’ll laugh at for the next twenty years. Sepia-toned proof that even a cloudy day when you’re near the water becomes part of the story.

Time stretches on the water.

The days feel longer. Conversations go deeper. No one is refreshing an app. No one is in a hurry. You’re just there. Sun-kissed and unbothered.

But what you don’t see on the checklist is the thing that matters most:

Connection.

It builds quietly. It settles into your bones. It moves through generations without asking for attention.

My hope is that one day they’ll crave it too. That they’ll grow up and make their own mental checklists. That they’ll load coolers and sunscreen and sleepy children into cars and chase the water the way we always have.

That the thread never breaks.

So thank you. To everyone who packed a cooler, saved a seat on the boat, stayed too late around a fire, and showed up summer after summer without being asked.

You are the reason the thread holds.

Maybe what I’m really craving isn’t just the water.

Maybe I’m craving the way it ties us together…past, present, and the little sunburned versions of us running down the dock.

A Midwest summer isn’t just a destination.

It’s a legacy.

And if we do it right, it never really leaves.

A Midwest summer has a soundtrack. It always has. Music drifting across the water, something familiar playing from a speaker no one remembers turning on. So of course I had to put one together, that part hasn’t changed even when everything else felt like it did.

Every single one of these songs means something. They’re tied to a person, a moment, a summer that lives somewhere in my memory with a little too much sun and not enough sunscreen. They’re my grandparents and my parents and the friends who showed up every single time. They’re the dock and the boat and the fire and the drive home when everyone was too tired to talk but nobody wanted it to end.

This playlist is for all of you.

For the ones who show up in my memories whether I’m trying to find them or not. For the faces I see when I smell sunscreen and lake water. For the voices I still hear when a certain song comes on. For the people who are so woven into my summers that I can’t separate them from the season itself.

This isn’t every song. Not even close. If I could build a real soundtrack to every memory every moment, every person, it would run for days and still feel too short.

You know who you are. And I hope you know what you mean.

Cheers. See you on the water.

🎵 Summer Mixtape: A Midwest Summer