This weekend, we went to Binghamton to help Kevin's brother build a patio. And we brought a bunch of friends. And for reasons unknown, I had this very regressive day; all day, little sensations of childhood kept coming to me, like it was the summer of 1992, and I was back by my parent's pool and doing little kid things. I don't know, it was strange, so I kept talking about it, and Stephen suggested it would make for an interesting mini-memoir essay, and I agreed. So here goes--a little free-write on Saturdays of summer and youth, with no pre-thinking.

I Spilled My Juice

I didn't want to track the dirt in from the backyard, and I was tired of taking my shoes off every time I had to go inside, so I took them off permanently and let my feet enjoy the cool of the shaded dirt. I stretched my toes wide open and pressed them into the lawn, where patches of grass were struggling to grow. Mostly it was still just bare, dark brown, feeling like it had rained two days ago dirt, with the perfect balance of hard and soft, giving beneath my feet but not mushy. So I was sitting, bent over at the waist, on the bottom stair, checking out the way the dirt never seemed to absorb my toeprints, when Lindsey yelled that she'd heard the ice cream truck and the girls went running.

We paused on the sidewalk in front of the house, our ears pricked for the tinny, circus sounds of summer's vehicle, trying to figure out which way around the block the driver would come. I followed Lindsey and Ashley, past Lindsey's grandma's house, and around the corner, still close enough that we could find our way back. My feet were still bare, as they always are in summer, and even though it was the first really hot weekend of the year, the bottoms must have still been callused from last summer, because the cement sidewalks and the little road pebbles and the hot asphalt didn't bother me at all, or I was just thinking about what kind of ice cream I should get.

I hung back behind the other two girls while ordering our ice cream. I rolled tiny chipped bits of asphalt under my big toe, sending them flying into the gutter with little flicks, as the bare, exposed yellow sun penetrated the skin on the back of my neck. Frustrated, I brushed flyaway pieces of hair back off my sweaty forehead, feeling a light smear of dirt left behind. My old, pilly t-shirt clung to the center of my back, and I wished for a pool, for the deep, cold water to wash all of this sticky season off my too hot, too pale skin. A moment later, walking back towards our house, a giant styrofoam cup full of mint chocolate milkshake in one hand, I giggled with Lindsey and Ashley and felt more cheerful with every sugary slug.

to be continued...