Nostalgia for a Simpler Summer

The air was thick with the smell of sunscreen and freshly cut grass, and for a moment, Sara could swear she was twelve years old again. She stood at the edge of the park, her rollerblades strapped on, a soft breeze lifting her hair as she watched the groups of kids dart by on bikes, skateboards, and, of course, rollerblades. A decade ago, she would have been right there with them—free, unbothered, and unaware of how much her life would change when she grew up. But now, at thirty, with a full-time job and bills that seemed to multiply overnight, those summers felt like a lifetime ago.

She tugged at the hem of her oversized graphic tee, a piece of 90s nostalgia she had found online. It was part of the retro trend that had surged back into fashion—vibrant colors, neon scrunchies, high-waisted shorts, all of it pulling her back to a time when life was simple. Simpler, at least.

Sara had always been a summer kid. Her parents didn’t believe in big vacations, but that didn’t matter to her. The long, hot months of June and July were filled with rollerblading down the neighborhood streets, making daisy chains with her friends, and stopping by the local ice cream truck for a popsicle that always seemed to melt too fast. Back then, summer was an endless string of carefree days, untethered by responsibility. Now, every day felt tethered to something—emails, deadlines, expectations.

This year, something had shifted in her. She found herself scrolling through online shops, looking at brightly colored windbreakers, oversized denim jackets, and jelly sandals. She bought a yellow Walkman off eBay, even though her music was now all digital. And one day, while cleaning out the basement, she found her old rollerblades, dusty and unused, but still intact. It had been years since she last wore them, but slipping them on felt like a rediscovery of something essential.

At first, she felt ridiculous. She wasn’t twelve anymore. Adults didn’t rollerblade around parks for fun, did they? But that’s what the whole summer of 2024 was becoming—this strange, collective yearning for something lost, for a simpler time before everything got so complicated. It was why she kept seeing girls in scrunchies and crop tops that looked plucked straight from 1995, why her social media was flooded with posts of people having “retro-themed” picnics with woven baskets and checkered blankets. The world was turning back, if only for a season, trying to recapture something it had left behind.

Sara wasn’t immune to it. That’s why she was here, strapped into rollerblades she hadn’t worn in years, standing on the edge of the same park she used to frequent as a kid. She took a deep breath, tentatively pushing off the pavement, feeling the familiar yet foreign motion of her feet gliding underneath her. She wobbled a little, catching herself before she fell. A small smile tugged at her lips as she found her balance. Muscle memory, it seemed, hadn’t abandoned her.

As she rolled along the path, the world around her blurred into a mixture of present and past. Children laughed, their voices echoing like distant memories of her childhood. She passed a group of teens lying on a blanket, their heads bent over Polaroids, snapping pictures that would later be pinned on their walls instead of posted online. Nearby, an old couple sat on a bench, sharing a soft-serve cone, the woman’s hair tied up in a pink scrunchie.

Sara’s heart clenched. It wasn’t just the clothes or the rollerblades that made her nostalgic—it was the feeling that came with them. The sense of being untethered from everything, when the biggest worry of the day was whether the ice cream would melt before she could finish it, or whether she’d have time for one more lap around the block before dinner. She missed the simplicity of it all, the way the summers stretched out before her like an endless horizon of possibility. Now, every summer was just another reminder of how fast time was slipping away, how quickly the years blurred into one another.

She skated in slow circles, her mind wandering. There was something comforting about the rhythm of it, the repetitive push and glide, like a heartbeat syncing with the past. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it, focusing instead on the sound of the wheels against the pavement. There was no urgency here, no deadline pressing against her mind. For a moment, she let herself pretend that she was back in 1998, that she had no obligations beyond this park and the way the sun felt on her face.

As the sky turned soft with the glow of dusk, Sara finally slowed to a stop, her legs aching from the unfamiliar exercise. She sat down on the grass, unstrapping her rollerblades and wiggling her toes in the cool breeze. She stared out at the park, watching as people packed up their blankets and frisbees, children reluctantly tugging at their parents’ hands to stay just a little longer.

Sara closed her eyes and leaned back on her hands, breathing in the warm, sticky air. There was a sweetness to this kind of nostalgia—a bittersweet pull that made her heart both ache and swell. The retro trends and the 90s resurgence weren’t just about fashion or activities. They were about chasing a feeling—a time when life was simpler, when the world felt smaller, and when summers felt endless.

She realized then that what she longed for wasn’t the rollerblades or the Walkman or the scrunchies. It was the sense of freedom that came with them, the lightness of being young and unburdened by life’s complications. But maybe, just maybe, she could reclaim a piece of that. Maybe she didn’t need to time-travel to find simplicity again. Perhaps it was about creating moments like this, where she allowed herself to be fully present, to let go of the noise and the pressure that came with adulthood, and to just be.

As the last light of the day faded, Sara laced up her sneakers and stood. She slung the rollerblades over her shoulder, feeling the weight of them, but also the lightness in her heart. She smiled to herself, the kind of smile that came from deep within, a quiet contentment. Summer may never feel as endless as it did when she was a child, but in these small moments, she found something even more precious—peace.

And that, she realized, was what nostalgia had given her. A reminder that while the world might never be as simple as it once seemed, she could still find ways to make it feel that way, if only for a while.