The Summer I Began to Carry the Sun

 "The Summer I Began to  Carry the Sun"

In that sweltering summer of 1976, when the air was thick with the scent of ripening fields, and childhood lingered like a distant memory, I turned ten. It was the summer ordained for my initiation into the toils of the earth, laboring alongside my mother and sisters beneath the unforgiving sun. The scorching days stretched out like the endless rows of cotton, onions, and lettuce we would tread. Yet, a quiet pride swelled within me, for this was the summer I would contribute to the family’s meager coffers, shedding the idle innocence of youth for the weary dignity of work.

Long gone would be the lazy summers of bickering with my younger siblings in the dim rooms of our modest home, the sluggish hands of the clock mocking our impatience as we awaited my mother’s and sisters’ return from the fields. Now, I would earn a seat at the table of their whispered dreams and secret yearnings, the quiet confessions of what they would buy and where they would wander, spun into the fabric of their weary evenings.

Each dawn, my mother’s call pierced the cool darkness at four o’clock, the fragrance of fresh tortillas and the sputter of her ancient coffee pot our only comfort in the early hour. The clamor of my sisters’ voices mingled with the staccato honk of the truck that ferried us to the fields—a rusting chariot collecting its drowsy pilgrims from the clustered homes of the projects.

In the cracked mirror, a boy with wild curls and tired eyes gazed back at me, a silent conspirator in my private world. His freckled face and stubbornly protruding ears mirrored my own doubts and small hopes. Together, we stood as silent witnesses against the cruel names hurled by careless tongues—sissy, queer boy, faggot—words that dissolved in the sacred hush of dawn.

The ride to the fields was a jostling, bone-rattling journey, the truck groaning under the weight of bodies and burdens. We paid ten dollars each week for this passage, a toll collected by a faceless man who knew nothing of our lives beyond the dusty roads and fertile rows. But in the orchards, among the heavy-laden limbs of peaches and oranges, my mother’s laughter rose like a hymn, mingling with the lilting calls of the men who chirped and whistled like birds. Here, she spoke of God with a certainty that made the sun seem dim—a deity whose presence thrummed in the earth and the whispered rustle of leaves.

"All of this is God’s work," she would proclaim, her hands dancing through the air to shoo away the persistent fruit flies as I devoured a sun-warmed peach. Her words wrapped around me, a spell that settled into my bones, rooting me to the land and the labor like a tree to the soil.

The dawns in the cotton fields, shadowed by the saguaro-studded silhouette of South Mountain, were a revelation. The sun crept over the horizon with divine stealth, its golden rays prying open the night’s grip. The first light was a shiver up my spine, a tremor of the divine. “Those are God’s spells,” my mother would say, touching her calloused hand to my chest, where the warmth lingered long after. “God is calling you because you are special. He lives here, in your heart.”

And so, under that vast and indifferent sky, amid the silent witness of the fields, I glimpsed the divine. God was not a man perched upon a throne of clouds but a force that lived in the swaying cotton and the steady rhythm of our hands. He was in the harmony of my sisters’ shared labor, in the tender way my mother hummed Yolanda Del Rio’s songs, her voice weaving through the rows like a prayer.

When August threatened the horizon, the specter of school loomed. Yet, this year was different. With our sweat and toil, we had carved out a reprieve for our mother—a space where laughter found her lips more easily, where the burden of bills did not loom so menacingly. The luxury of layaway awaited us at JCPenney’s and Kmart, the promise of new clothes transforming the dull evenings into a vibrant parade of imagined outfits and whispered boasts.

This was the first year I would not dress like my younger brothers, the first year we all donned fresh garments as we walked into the schoolyard, standing a little taller, cloaked in the proof of our labor.

In the cradle of that summer, beneath the blazing sun and the watchful eyes of the saguaros, I ceased to be merely a boy. I became a part of the earth, of the family, of the silent, enduring struggle that bound us all together in the fields where God’s hands moved unseen but ever-present. 

The concept of God changed for me over the years and became a lowercase word. 

I sit with this "god" every day, especially as I remember and remember.