June and Juno

On childhood summers, freedom, and what needs protecting

Childhood summers

When I was little, June was something that opened up before us, like a valley.

Because my mother was a teacher, she had summer holidays as long as ours, and for a large part of the holiday she would take us children to the farm where my grandmother had grown up. The farm lay in a narrow valley, surrounded by high mountains, almost like an open room with steady walls around it.

My mother had also spent her childhood summers in that same place. When she was growing up, summer was full of work: grass to be cut, animals to be tended. But there was also a small, familiar group of cousins who came every summer. They worked together, laughed together, and I hope they also enjoyed slow summer hours together.

My sister and I were mostly spared the work. By then, there were no animals left on the farm, and the land was rented out. One summer in my early teens we did have a summer job there, helping to paint the house, but otherwise it was play from morning until evening.

Oh, how we played.

We were four girls of about the same age in a summerland — me, my cousin, and two other girls who belonged there in their own ways, as well as my little sister. There were others too — a couple of boys, and adults who were there if we needed them. But the heart of it was us girls, the farmhouse, and the nature around us.

We wandered around as if the valley were ours. And perhaps, for those weeks, it was. Not because we owned it, but because we were allowed to be there without being governed by demands or time. We felt free and protected at the same time.

There was reddish soil, a river winding through the landscape, and Trollstigen rising at one end as a reminder that the world could be both safe and vast.

There were sandbanks we turned into a beach volleyball court, wild deciduous woods to disappear into, and chests of old clothes to dress up in.

There were horses on the neighbouring farm that we were allowed to look at and groom, and a pasture for young bulls that we cycled past quickly — especially if any one of us happened to be wearing a red T-shirt.

And then there were the peacocks.

The same farm that had horses also had a few peacocks wandering freely around. I don’t remember thinking this was strange — the exotic can become entirely ordinary when it is part of childhood. A peacock in the grass, fanning its brightly coloured feathers, was as natural as the river and the sand and the smell of horses on my hands.

Only later did I learn that the peacock belongs to Juno — the Roman goddess who gave her name to the month of June. Juno is associated with women, transitions, marriage and birth, but also with the protection of what holds value.

It is as if June itself carries this double gaze: the month opens the doors toward the bright and wild, while at the same time asking what we wish to protect.

Perhaps this is part of June’s essence: the joy of everything growing and flowering, but also the urge to care for and protect what is fragile — the flowers in the pot that need just enough water and sun to grow, and a childhood that needs just enough freedom and protection to be good.

Because the summers of childhood are not simply something that passes by. They can remain in us as rooms we may enter — an inner landscape of reddish soil, peacocks and play, with protective mountain walls around it.

They can remain in us as a feeling in the fingertips from a soft horse’s muzzle, or as the rocking motion of a garden swing, and the summer dress of a friend brushing against your own.

Now we are approaching the summer solstice.

The light is still rising, the days are stretching freely in every direction, and everything in nature wants to grow up and out and onward. But hidden within the solstice is also the turning. The brightest point is not only a peak, but also a threshold.

Perhaps June is like that: an open landscape in need of protection. A month for walking barefoot out into the world, but also for asking: What do I want to take care of? What do I want to protect?

It has been a long time since those summers in the valley. Much has happened since then — demands and responsibilities and loss. Growing up can be difficult. So can adult life. And yet those summers live in me as an open, bright room with steady walls around it.

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