The Story Behind One Summer Day
When I was about two years old – an early day in Mike Forty’s life.
Some memories should not exist — and yet they do.
I was only around two years old, perhaps younger, when a moment quietly settled into my heart and stayed there for the rest of my life. I remember very little from that age — almost nothing — but I remember this.
It was a beautiful summer’s day. The sun was shining brightly, and the world seemed alive with gentle sound — insects buzzing, bees moving through the garden, the quiet hum of warm life all around. There were people gathered outside, their attention focused on one man resting on a camp bed near the house, covered by a light-coloured blanket.
At the time, I was too young to understand what I was seeing.
That man was my grandfather. He was in the late stages of cancer, though he was still alive, still present, surrounded by family and summer light. There was no dramatic sadness in the air that I remember — only a strange stillness, a quiet tenderness, and the feeling that something important was happening, even if I could not have known what it was.
My grandfather adored me, I’m told.
He used to take me with him to a little shed where a man repaired cars, and I loved collecting old nuts and bolts — little treasures to a small boy — stuffing them into my pockets and proudly carrying them home. Those tiny moments of affection, those simple adventures, somehow became part of me.
What amazes me is that I remember any of it at all.
My father, now ninety-three years old, confirms those memories are true. The house where it happened still stands, and he now lives just across the road from it. Life has moved on, years have passed, generations have grown older — yet that single summer day remains bright and clear in my mind.
Why?
I think perhaps because love was there.
Long before I understood life, loss, or memory itself, I understood something deeper without words — that I loved him, and that he loved me. And perhaps that is why this moment stayed when so many others faded.
One Summer Day is a song about memory, love, and the quiet moments that shape us long before we know they are shaping us. It is about how the heart remembers what the mind cannot explain.
Some memories fade.
Some remain forever.
And sometimes, all it takes is one summer day.
ONE SUMMER DAY
(60s reflective ballad)
Verse 1
One summer day in golden light
The bees were loud, the sky was bright
People gathered, voices low
Around a man I’d come to know
Covered by a blanket pale
Quiet eyes and face grown frail
I was young — too young to see
What that day would come to mean to me
Verse 2
He used to take my little hand
To where the working men would stand
Old nuts and bolts became my prize
Pocket treasure in small-boy eyes
Tiny fingers, pockets wide
Carrying bits of life with pride
Simple things meant all the world
To one small wide-eyed little boy
Chorus
I remember summer humming
Sunlight dancing in the air
Though I knew so little of life
Somehow I knew that love was there
I remember quiet moments
Gentle voices, warm and slow
Funny what the heart remembers
Long after all the mind lets go
Verse 3
Now I pass that house again
And feel the quiet pull of then
My father still lives very near
Just across the road from here
Years have flown like drifting leaves
Still that summer softly breathes
Of all the things time stole away
My heart kept hold of that one day
Bridge
Maybe love writes something deeper
Than the mind can understand
Leaves a mark that time can’t weather
Soft as light on weathered hands
Final Chorus
I remember summer humming
Bees and sunlight, warm and fair
And though I knew so little then
I somehow knew that love was there
One summer day, so long ago
Still lives in me — still softly glows
Not every memory fades from view…
Some remain because they’re true
Michael Forty