Theme From A Summer Place
A True Romance of Love
The Song That Always Brings Her Back
A Reminiscence Inspired by “Theme from a Summer Place”
The sun was setting low, casting golden ribbons through the sycamore leaves, and the old man sat in his creaky porch rocker, an iced tea in hand and a soft sigh behind his eyes. Then he heard the first few notes of that familiar melody, "Theme from a Summer Place." He closed his eyes. The radio crackled a bit just like the old one in his dad’s Buick convertible. The year was 1960. He was seventeen. She had blue eyes that matched the sky and a voice that made you forget your own name. They met at the beach dance in late June. He wore a white T-shirt and cuffed jeans. She wore a light blue sundress with a seashell necklace and looked, in his words, “like a dream had come to life.”
They didn’t say much at first. They didn’t need to. That song played, not loud, just enough, and they swayed, and they laughed, and then they kissed. And it felt like the whole world had slowed down just for them.
That was their song. Not a fast one. Not a party one. But a song that lived between heartbeats, in the quietest but most eternal places. Back in the present, he opened his eyes, his hand instinctively resting on the arm of the chair next to him. It was empty now, but only in the physical sense. He could still see her there. Always could.
They married in 1970. Raised five kids. Bought a house in Red Bluff, California, a small farming town a hundred and thirty miles north of Sacramento, with a porch and two acres of farm land. He’d play that song every anniversary, even after her memory began to fade. And on the last day, her last day, he played it one more time by her bedside. Her eyes opened, just a little, and she whispered, “Our summer place.” Then she was gone, like the tide going out. But not really. Because here he was, in the twilight of his years, the breeze warm on his face, and that melody drifting through the air like a promise. The summer place, their summer place, wasn’t gone, it was still here. Not in any place you could find on a map. But in the soul. In the heart. In the song.