Barefoot Summer: Sticky Mango and Sea-Tossed Hair, Told in Photographs

When days begin before the sun fully wakes, with the chickens calling through an open window still heavy from the night’s warm air. I slip out of bed as the first hush of light spills in, gather the boys, and step barefoot onto pine needles warmed by the first golden rays, their resin rising like a perfume only summer knows. We walk, quiet as the cicadas begin their chorus, down to the village bakery for still-warm croissants, hands sticky before the day has even started.

Back home, the swimsuits go on, fruit is cut barefoot by the pool, the table set for a breakfast that tastes of holiday. We eat under a sky turning from blush to bright, the promise of a long beach morning ahead before the crowds come. The waves wait for us, a playground of salt and laughter, until we return sun-tired to gather with family, the grandparents drifting in for an afternoon that folds into grilled suppers and stories.

This gallery holds those living minutes: the scent of pine and sunscreen, mango on children’s cheeks, linen left to dry in the Provençal breeze. It is the memory of summer as we live it — unhurried, barefoot, bright with the goodness God wrote into these long, golden days.