SUMMERTIME
Summertime seemed magical. I lived to be free from school.
We played independently outdoors all day. Mother could whistle LOUDLY by using
her fingers in her mouth and I knew when I heard that whistle that she meant
for me to come home NOW. I knew that if I didn’t come quickly that I might have
to select a willow branch from the neighbor’s tree and pay the consequence. We rode
our bikes, made play houses from large cardboard boxes, caught fireflies at
dusk, and sometimes after dark, we played hide n seek until our parents called us back indoors. We
drank sugar sodas, kool aide, ate sugary candy, yet no one was overweight
because we played so physically. We would often go to the newly built baseball
park to watch the baseball games until way after dark. We also had a putt putt
golf course, and parents would drop us off so that we could play a couple of
rounds, until we phoned them to come get us.
On the last hole, you had to putt onto a difficult uphill platform, and
if you made a hole-in-one, you won a free game. My best friend, Lisa Jones, and
I were jockeying one evening there on the last hole to see who would be the
first to make a shot, and she hoisted her club as if to swing hard and her club
came around and struck me in the back of the head. The owner of the course called my parents,
they came quickly. Though bloody and with a scar on the back of my head, all
was okay. I still wonder today if that is the cause/concussion that I may have
had that created my seizures that began in my late 50s.
A fond memory is when my cousins would come and we would
play on the Slip n Slide and set up a croquet set with wooden mallets. I established meaningful relationships with my
cousins. I grew up around extended family and my cousins were very important as
play mates, just right next to brothers and sister.
We often set up play dates with friends to go swimming at
the Country Club, usually to connect with a larger circle of friends. Our mothers would pick us up. When they
arrived at the house, they would honk the horn and then deliver us to our
destination. We would phone home when we were ready to come home.
