Summer Memories
Today is my favorite day of the year. The last day of school with the whole summer stretched in front of me. There are so many things that make me think of summer. I was talking (okay, texting) with my mom about it and she said it is because we have so many good summer memories.
Oreos, for one. I remember we’d go swimming at the pool in Seguin, then shivering in our bathing suits, would go to the grocery store on the way home. Double Stuff Oreos had just come out. I will forever associate the smell of chlorine with the taste of Oreos.
Sweet sodas. Ordinarily I don’t like sweet drinks, but in the summer, I love cream sodas, root beer, and right now, watermelon soda. I think this goes back to summer evenings when my grandmother would walk us over to the convenience store (the ice house, we called it) and we’d buy cream soda (Blue Nehi) and pretty much all the candy we could eat!
Books. I read so much during summers. I read Trixie Belden books until they fell apart. My grandmother signed me up for a horse book club, and I read those books until they fell apart. The school would open the library one morning a week and I was there, in the cool, darkened, nearly-empty school library for my stack of books. We learned that the public library delivered books, so I got those, too. I read my grandfather’s westerns when I ran out of things to read, and my grandmother would take me to the five and dime and I’d get Harlequins (I liked the Janet Dailey ones). So yeah, books EVERYWHERE.
Gingham. I think it’s because Mom made me a pink and white gingham bedspread and curtains. Myroom was bright and pretty, and I spent a lot of time in it during the summer. You know, reading.
Halter tops. They were one of the first things I learned how to sew…two panels with drawstrings at the top, that tied at the shoulders. I probably made six of them and wore them until I couldn’t go without a bra anymore.
The smell of coffee in the drive-thru. This one I blame on Fred and our road trips, though we don’t limit them to summer. But we always stop at a drive-thru for breakfast on our way out of town.
Totino’s Pizzas. When Josh was little, we’d buy those for lunches on summer days. Actually, I kept buying them even when he was a teenager and could eat more than one by himself!
