Summer

My heart is aching for summer, especially the summers when I was 7,8 and 9.

My dad would load up our Volvo Station Wagon (and then later our Ford Windstar), and we would drive through Dallas, Texarkana, Arkadelphia, Little Rock...and FINALLY we would make it to Memphis.  My parents had activity binders for us.  There was a map in the pocket that's just inside the binder when you open it.  Dad had highlighted the route we would take, and every time we stopped we would get out our maps and circle the city/town/part of the highway where we stopped.  I loved this.  Thinking about it now it doesn't make a lot of sense why a seven-year-old girl would enjoy this so much, but I adored circling those places.  Adding another place where I'd been.  Marking it on a map.  It was so OFFICIAL.  It was so, yes I've been here without defacing public property.

When we finally made it to Grandmother's there were shouts of jubilant joy.  Seriously.  You have not heard jubilant joy until you've finished your 10 hour car journey with a 5 year old annoying little brother and a 2 year old crying baby sister.  JOY.  

That night we would go see Grandmommy and Poppa Eoff, my great-grandparents.   Grandmommy Eoff would feed us Cheez-Its and Pepsi and encourage me to eat tons because that's what the teenagers eat.  So I did.  They had bags of strawberry candy, you know the kind that's hard with the oozy strawberry center.  I'm not sure why they always had giant paper bags filled with them, but they always did, that and bubble gum.

Poppa Eoff would regale us with stories...and about 5 minutes into it no one really knew what he was talking about, but I listened anyway, because I liked hearing the sound of his voice.  And no matter what, there was always a quiz at the end.  He would point to something and ask me what it was and to tell him the story about it, just to make sure I was listening.  

At this point my brother, sister and I were the only grandkids.  The other ones hadn't come along yet.  So when my second cousins Chad and Kacy came over to Grandmommy and Poppa Eoff's house it was seriously fun.  We would dance in the back of Poppa's truck and sing Rockin' Robin.  They called Grandmommy Eoff by a different name, Monnie.  One summer I spent so much time around them I began calling her that too, even though it felt weird.

One particular night was magic.  That's the only way to describe it.  It wasn't magical.  It was just MAGIC.  Gavin, Chad, Kacy and I were running around in Grandmommy and Poppa Eoff's backyard with mason jars in the twilight hours of the summer desperately trying to catch lightning bugs.  Earlier that day Grandmother had told me a story of how she and my Aunt Dot would catch lightning bugs and then take the part of the bug that lights up and put it on her finger like a ring so it glowed.  I remember being slightly disturbed by this because it meant she was killing them.

It smelled like rain.  The grass was soft under my feet, and we were running around...dancing.  I was dancing like the lightning bugs.  Gavin and I pretended to be lightning bugs, flitting about, dancing, lighting up the night air like stars.

What are some of your favorite summer memories?