The story below is an excerpt from our May/June 2018 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
A dedication to books doesn’t deserve such a fate for a kid.
Summer, summer, summer, a word so sweet and full of potential. When I was a child, the only thing that could make me more excited than summer was Christmas. If summer school vacation had come bearing gifts, there would have been no contest.
What was so great about summer? Shorts and flip-flops, for one. My school had a dress code that required girls to wear dresses or skirts. As a normal country girl, that just did not work for me. What kind of tree climbing or cart wheeling could one do in a silly skirt? Also, dresses and skirts almost never had pockets. I need my pockets. I had some important stuff to haul around. I had a whole nutmeg my grandmother gave me for luck. I had pretty pebbles I had found on walks. I always had a roll of Butter Rum Lifesavers. Shorts were the best invention ever. They were cool, easy, and they always had pockets. So sensible. To this day, my fashion sense can best be described as “comfort first.”
What else did I love about summer? There was a huge honeysuckle vine that had taken over a forsythia bush right under my bedroom window. All summer long, I fell asleep to the lush sweetness of honeysuckle blossoms. The scent of honeysuckle relaxes me still.
Don’t forget berries. I adore blackberries and raspberries, but my grandmother had a decent stand of gooseberries that had a lovely, lip-smacking tartness. Of course, everyone planted strawberries each year. So much strawberry shortcake, and homemade strawberry ice cream, and that’s not counting the buckets of strawberries that were made into jam for the winter.
But we haven’t discussed my favorite thing about summer. Most definitely it was the hours and hours I spent reading. Oh, the adventures I had every summer and all of it took place sitting on the front porch, my back resting against the porch column, bees buzzing nearby in the spirea bushes. I traveled all over the globe and did it without leaving my house.
I was lucky enough to have several adults in my life who fed me books. I remember each and every one of them, showing up to visit with Mama and bearing a paper sack of books for me. I will always be grateful to the people who took the time to make my world a little bigger and a little brighter, just by giving me secondhand books. Whenever I spotted a paper grocery bag with the name, “Ukrop’s” printed on it, I would get excited. I guess summer did come with gifts.