21 Summer Memories

21 Summer Memories

• 1. The smell of hot pavement damp with rain.

• 2. Cool green grass beneath my grandmother’s apple trees.

• 3. Chocolate ice-cream cones from the little shop around the corner.

• 4. Short pixie haircuts and matching short outfits.

• 5. Panting dogs, lazy cats.

• 6. Summer storms coming– black angry skies, rumbling thunder, and those first large hesitant drops of rain.

• 7. Watermelon

• 8. Grandma’s large old picnic basket with a complete set of brightly colored (plastic) plates, cups, and utensils.

• 9. Kool-Aid in a large clear (glass) pitcher, with enough sugar to kill a horse; and iced-tea.

• 10. Fans humming at night.

• 11. A cool pillowcase turning warm, till you turn it over to another cool side.

• 12. Hot cement on bare feet.

• 13. The smell of tomato vines.

• 14. Early morning sunshine falling across the flower beds.

• 15. The fishy smell of Lake Mitchell and the winding tree-lined gravel roads around it.

• 16. Cool linoleum floors.

• 17. Silver nail polish

• 18. Bicycling everywhere, on a new girls’ blue bike (circa 1968).

• 19. Silver moonlight falling on my grandmother’s pear tree, so bright it was hard to believe it was night.

• 20. My grandmother’s turquoise & white checked table cloth used for family dinners.

• 21. Laying lazily on my bed on hot afternoons, in front of an open window, with the elm tree right outside, reading old copies of Nancy Drew mysteries, Ann Sheridan in "The Sign of the Sphinx";  Louisa May Alcott’s "Eight Cousins"; and the adventures of flight nurse Cherry Ames.