My in-box is full of back-to-school sales. My freezer is full of popsicles and nobody wants to eat anything except sliced cucumbers, cold cereal, or banana milkshakes. We drink chilled, pink wine or lemonade over crushed ice, and sleep on top of the sheets.
We finally had our huge and sorrowful lawn aerated, sprinklers adjusted, but it seems like a close call. There’s so much thatch, white clover, and lesser trefoil I begin to think we should let it go wild.
We once took the train to California — my mother, my brother, and me. She packed bagel sandwiches in tinfoil (when bagels, in Colorado, were so unknown my schoolmates teased me about bringing donuts in my lunch). As the cars pulled away and down the track, we waved to my father from the window, my heart breaking in the terribly woeful melodrama of a 9-year-old-girl. We made it to my aunt’s, and spent three late-summer weeks eating shaved ice and boogie boarding at Hermosa Beach.