I Know What We Will Not Be Doing Next Summer

Every summer for the past twenty-five years, like clockwork, the four of us—Anton, Jean, Marjorie, and Webster—came together as if the calendar demanded it. Whether it was a lazy picnic under the oaks in Prospect Park, a dinner crawl through old haunts in Manhattan, or a grilled feast in someone’s backyard, summer had a rhythm, and that rhythm pulsed to the beat of our friendship.

We had been through it all together—heartbreaks and marriages, job losses and promotions, births and even a funeral or two. There were years when we met more often, others when work or family kept us apart, but no matter what, summer was our time.

This year, Anton—always the planner—sent out the text in late May.

“Same weekend as usual? I’ll bring the grill. Who’s bringing the drinks?”

Responses chimed in with emojis and inside jokes. Everyone was in. But deep down, Anton felt a twinge of something he couldn’t name. Perhaps it was intuition, or maybe it was the residue of last summer.

Because something had changed.

It had started innocently enough over a year ago. A conversation during dinner about education funding turned into a heated debate. Webster, always the most outspoken of us, had veered deep into talking points that none of us had even thought about. He’d always leaned conservative—back in high school, he was the guy who quoted Reagan while the rest of us blasted Rage Against the Machine—but now there was a new edge. An urgency. A mission.

This summer was no different, at least not in Anton’s mind, who was always nonpolitical. He set up his backyard for our annual barbecue. The grill was cleaned to a shine, the burgers were marinated, and the music was queued up. Jean arrived first with her famous watermelon and feta salad. Marjorie followed with two six-packs of our favorite beer and a joke about the humidity turning her hair into a “public safety hazard.”

Then Webster arrived, wearing a red “1776 Forever” t-shirt and carrying a cooler wrapped in an American flag. No one said anything—at first. We had made a pact after last year: no politics, not at our gatherings. It was sacred.

But within twenty minutes, he was at it again.

“These blue napkins?” Webster said with a laugh as he set down his cooler. “Come on, Anton. Are you trying to make a statement here?”

Anton blinked. “They were on sale.”

“You should’ve gone red. Red is classic. Patriotic.”

Jean gave me a sideways glance and a tight smile, one that said, "Here we go again.”

We let it slide. We always tried to let it slide. But like a drip from a leaky faucet, it added up. At dinner, he managed to wedge in a rant about gas stoves, somehow relating it to Marjorie’s grilled zucchini. When we shifted to talking about our kids, he pivoted to how liberal indoctrination was ruining schools. Even our music playlist wasn’t safe.

“Bob Dylan? The guy’s a socialist,” he muttered between bites of ribs.

We tried every tactic—changing the subject, deflecting with humor, steering toward shared memories. But Webster wasn’t interested in reminiscing. He was on a crusade.

“You know what’s wrong with this country?” he said at one point, leaning back in his chair like a pundit on cable news. “We’ve forgotten who we are.”

“We’re not here to talk about the country,” Anton said gently. “We’re here to enjoy each other.”

Webster frowned, looked around at the silence, then picked up his red plastic cup and walked to the far end of the yard.

We finished the evening, but the laughter was thinner, the food less flavorful, the music more background than bond. When the last of the tiki torches dimmed and Jean hugged me goodbye, she whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this again.”

None of us said it out loud, but we all felt it: the joy of our tradition was slowly unraveling.

By July, things worsened. Plans for a beach day were suggested in the group chat, but only Marjorie responded. “Too much going on,” Jean texted. “Maybe another weekend.” Anton quietly canceled a dinner reservation he had made for all of us at our usual favorite gathering spot.

We weren’t mad at Webster—not really. We knew who he was. We understood that he was passionate and, deep down, still that fiercely loyal friend who once stayed up all night helping Jean cram for the LSATs and carried Anton down three flights of stairs after he tore his ACL.

But we were all exhausted. We were tired of the minefield, of the subtle digs and pointed lectures, of watching every word and walking on eggshells. We had built something beautiful—decades of memories, of unconditional support—and it was cracking under the weight of national talking points and cable news hysteria.

“I miss us,” Marjorie said one afternoon over coffee. “The real us. Not the version that feels like a debate stage.”

It was then that it hit me.

This wasn’t just about Webster. It wasn’t about napkins or playlists or even the politics. It was about the disease spreading through our entire country—a disease of division. Somewhere along the way, politicians and pundits decided it was a good strategy to turn every difference into a battle, convincing people that compromise was a sign of weakness and that friendship across the political spectrum was a betrayal.

And the cost wasn’t just national unity or elections.

The cost was ours.

Four friends who once danced barefoot at midnight in Coney Island and cried together after Marjorie’s divorce no longer shared the same social space! It seems they had forgotten the day when we all nervously sat in a hospital waiting room while Jean was getting her appendix removed. It was sad that, after so many years of looking forward to summers spent together, times had changed.

Now, we see each other less often. We talk less frequently and laugh less when we meet!

And it hurt.

But I still believe in the power of shared history. I think in Webster’s goodness, even if it’s hidden under layers of ideology. I think of Jean’s fire, Marjorie’s warmth, and Anton’s endless patience.

I wanted to believe that this wasn’t the end.

This is why Anton wrote a long letter to Webster. He also sat him down and explained to him how we all felt -- not to change his mind, but to help him understand what was at stake. Not the politics, but our long-term friendships!

But in the end, we all realized that all our efforts were fruitless. Sadly, we had become another statistic in a divided country that has forgotten how to listen.

Summer was always more than a season; it was a promise. A gathering of souls who once made a vow—not in words, but in love—that we’d always be there for each other.

Even if the napkins were blue.