The Summer We Are 15

Flash growth and learning to survive.

A version of this essay was originally published at Medium.com and then with The Good Men Project “Modern Identities” imprint

I was 15 in 1973. It was the year my parents began their divorce. It was also the year that I began to seriously grow my hair long and think — quite innocently compared to life here in the 2020s — about why there are limitations on our behavior as male and female members of our society. What kind of person did I feel I wanted to become? Why did what people think of me make me feel so much pressure? What does it mean when we’re expected to conform?

I also fell in love with a girl who happened to be an amazing athlete and musician at the beginning of the summer. She was a whip-smart student as well. I was an okay athlete, could kind of sing, and did well enough in subjects that I liked. I should have felt emasculated by her. However, I took pride in being her boyfriend specifically because she could beat me at tennis and ping pong and most any card game. I didn’t feel like a lesser human at all. Even though we never talked about it, I don’t think she ever considered me lesser either.

My coming-of-age novel, Old Music for New People, takes place during the summer of 2013. The narrator is 15-year-old Ivy Scattergood who is sure she knows what she thinks about everything that’s important — and unimportant. In particular, she’s sure she knows what she thinks about gender and identity in the modern world. Of course, change begins to take hold of her life on numerous levels all at once. Ivy’s telling the reader a story about the most momentous summer she may ever experience.

Everyone’s 15-year-old summer has probably been momentous-as-heck for at least the past hundred years. We’re part kid still and feel ourselves desperately wanting to be considered mature, but we’re also kind of stunned by what we’re discovering about adult life and how weirdly complicated everything actually is.

It may make sense for every adult to think back to that 15-year-old transition time. It’s also important for people in their early teens to be aware of what’s coming. And without doubt, parents of young teenagers need to remember that this crux summer is coming. Everything changes. No. Matter. What.

• • •

In 1973, my girlfriend wa an astoundingly successful young classical pianist and performed around our neck of the woods a fair amount. I was a hack guitarist and wannabe rock singer barely able to play barre chords. Nowadays, I shrug my shoulders whenever I think about her. She was amazing and I was not. In a nascent, kind of dumb teenage boy way I respected the hell out of her. I still do.

Hailing from academic families, we went in separate directions for summer vacation. Her family had a cabin out west in the Rockies. My family escaped the heat of our small midwestern city on an island in Lake of the Woods, Canada.

Trips to the post office were the only way to get mail up there in the Canadian wilderness. We wrote letters to each other weekly. The sojourn by boat a few times a week to the mainland was an astounding emotional event for me, hoping and longing for a letter from her.

My letters to her were composed while listening to the one radio station we could get out there just west of the boundary waters in Northwestern Ontario. Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” was huge that summer. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” by the Bee Gees showed up seven or eight times a day. Late in the summer we heard a new song by the Rolling Stones that was quite intriguing called “Gimme Shelter.” The line at the end of that song, “It’s just a kiss away,” was extremely poignant for me.

That’s how I survived the summer I was 15 as our family stumbled towards its demolition. Receiving letters from that amazing young woman gave me a way to believe there was still hope, possibly even true wonder in the world.

• • •

My parents wouldn’t be speaking to each other much by that fall, except to argue late at night. I also began to cultivate a basic hippie vibe, although by then they didn’t call us hippies. We called ourselves freaks.

The long hair thing was huge for guys back in the ’60s and ’70s. So was the idea of male friends hugging each other publicly. Also, the sight of men wearing jewelry. It was shocking to people when I got my left ear pierced just before I turned 16. For that matter, girl’s weren’t allowed to wear jeans to school for a long while there. Battles flared up all over the country about letting girls play Little League baseball. And hairy legs on females or hairy armpits freaked a lot of people out — men and women. Those seemingly small rules of gender presentation were significant issues for most of those two decades…until they weren’t (well, except for the body hair thing, maybe).

It took me years to fully recover from that wondrous young woman dumping me when we started out in 10th grade. Somehow, though, it wasn’t the actual dumping that stunned me. It was more the repudiation of all that exquisite summer emotion we’d shared in letters. Everything I had felt was now simply supposed to evaporate. I’d seen it all coming, I suppose (older, cooler guys always win in high school). It took some time though. Losing at love when your family is about to tear apart is stultifying. Even now, though, when I think back, my summer of 15 was profound and momentous. It shot me off riding a mainline vector that would become the rest of my life. I’m pretty sure it does that for most of us.

• • •

Fifteen is the end of your first 20 percent. It’s also the beginning of your next 20 which ends at 30 . Partly, I think, we begin to suspect in that 15th summer the question of no turning back may well be legitimate. It takes time, though, to realize and understand what the answer to such a question means.

And so, nearly forty years later I’ve published a novel told by a spunky opinionated narrator about the summer she was 15, on vacation with her family, not in Canada, but in Maine. It’s a story of love on many levels. Gender identity is big in the story. So are all the questions of physical presence and the body. It’s certainly not my story, though. It’s all Ivy’s. She has to deal with her own version of momentous personal education there in the middle of her teens. She’s nothing like my girlfriend from back in 1973. She’s nothing like me either. If anything, she’s more how I imagine my wife would have been when she was 15 — the love of my life who I didn’t meet until I was 30, the end of my second 20 percent.

I’m lucky. My relationship with that incredible young woman so long ago gave me the confidence (and the competence) to be able to find a partner who is whip-smart and talented. Make no mistake about it, the summer we are 15 is momentous and life changing. Sometimes we don’t even realize that until we’re well on our way into being grown up and adult. Change comes no matter what. That which is tough to deal with, and painful, can be the best thing that ever happened to us. Every life is different. We should all remember we’re in this together. We should also remember where we came from so that we know where we’re going.

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For more perspectives on growing up and being a teen, check these out:

Maybe Everything Depends on the Wedding

Advice on Reading and Writing and Intimacy

Why I Loved Ayn Rand’s Books But Am Still a Liberal