I love summer; it is my favorite season.

Maybe is the long, luxurious, and what seem to me to be unhurried days; maybe it is because I have a summer birthday. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I love summer, and I love what I have come to think of as “state fair season.”

Last year, my state fair project was an homage to my maternal grandmother and the summers I spent at her house, looking out windows, playing on the cool concrete of her front porch, climbing shade trees and looking down on the world that was for the most part, taller than I, watching through the window of the room where I stayed and counting the cars as trains passed by:

In many ways, it was a simple assignment; I was documenting my favorite parts of summer with my grandmother.

This year, however, I want to document my paternal grandmother — a woman I never met because she died at the age of 48, twelve years before I was born.

I don’t exactly know how I am going to make this project work because it begs the question: how do you document the life of and come to know someone you never met?

I am reminded of this because yesterday, when I went to check the mail, I found this in my mailbox:

I had been mulling over this year’s project and waking up with vague dreaming of what form it would take. Now, as I battle chaos on the one hand, I must also begin to consider the kick off to state fair season.

Just nine days into summer, and I can already notice the increasingly shorter days and the changing slant of the sunlight as I hurry to photograph my projects at the end of the day.

I know that this summer will — as all my summers have — go by too fast, but I am ready, hook in hand for whatever lies ahead.