All In A Summer's Day

If this was my childhood I would be playing in the yard, on the swing set with Mary and Josie, while the adults relaxed on the brick patio, sipping gin and tonics. Either Dad or Bopaw would be at the grill cooking burgers and steaks to be served with sliced tomatoes, cottage cheese with chives and corn on the cob. After dinner we would raid the freezer for ice cream bars and eat strawberries fresh from the garden, stretched out on the patio, sticky and laughing, and begging off bed for as long as possible.

But this is Mary and Kate's childhood, not mine, and so the playing is on the deck that sits above the garage, sometimes with Evelyn, sometimes without. There's no big green yard and no beautiful garden but there are gin and tonics, and we are surrounded by our best effort, pots of every kind full of flowers, still alive two weeks after planting. Dinner could be on the grill, there's a dad but no grandfather, or we could wander to the tacqueria at the end of the block, or the Italian place at the other end. They may find ice cream, there is mango gelato in the freezer, and probably some strawberries, not from the garden but from our wonderful farmer's market, all to be eaten on the back deck late into the evening.

Different, and hopefully wonderful. Full of the kind of things that build a happy childhood and create memories to be remembered on a semi sunny Saturday, who knows where, forty years from now.