Summer, for Maggie
Summer for Maggie had always been about movement. Academy and Advance-course graduations most often occurred in the months of June or August. Duty stations changed in the summer—probably an artifact of wanting to allow military dependents to finish a school year before moving them across the country, or planet. The Hudson’s shakedown cruise had started in the midst of a sweltering July.
Summer was about loss. Her mother had bled out on the living room floor during a June night alive with heat lightning and the fluttering of lacewings around the porch lights.
Summer was about packing up and moving. By her rough count, she’d spent sixteen of her twenty-eight summers lugging boxes and suitcases. The smells of packing paper and crates left too long in the sun mixed in her memories with the smells of lemonade and sunscreen.
Summer was about meeting new people. She’d stand on the porch as men and women, and later, aliens, came in and out the front door. They’d stream in to pay their respects to her father while she stayed out of the way or escaped down the street. When she was older, the Admiral insisted she stand with him, his hand heavy on her shoulder, and act as hostess.
By her calculation, the Hudson would return to Earth by the middle of August.
Another summer.
Another time of change, of un-packing, and of loss.
This time she would neither hide from nor stand with her father.
Summer would now be about confrontation.
Summer would be a time of reckoning.
This insight into Cmdr Maggie O’Connell’s feelings about summertime is the product of a writing prompt provided by Caroline Beuley of Fairy Tales by Caroline. She is running a writers group and July’s session centered around “Summer”. While other participants listed their favorite memories of camp, pools, family vacations, popsicles, and the beach, my keyword associations were: hot, graduations, and moving. I used those words to shape this musing of another military-brat: my spaceship pilot, Maggie O’Connell.
If you’d like to read more about Maggie and her shipmates, please consider buying Dremiks or reading these two free offerings here on my Substack:
Gifts Between Shipmates
Racing home with an alien escort in the hopes of heading-off a military coup back on Earth, the pilot and engineer of the Hudson steal a few minutes for a Christmas gift exchange.
A Crowded Bar on Assignment Day
This is a brand new short story featuring two of the main characters from “Dremiks”. I used to send out one exclusive short story with my monthly newsletter. This one is too long to stick in a newsletter, though! Please leave me a comment and tell me what you think.
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Great read. We all want to imagine summer as this joyful, healing, resting time. But for so many, it is a time of stress, especially given the weather, in reality or in fiction. And given Maggie's upheavals over the years, summer means more upheaval - more preparing, more moving, more uncertainty as to where she's going and what she will find there, all the more so as she is now in a leadership position where others will look to her to steer the wheel of things.
Just stopping by to say hello; I’ve come here from your post on the community section of the Story University.