peach moon, Main Street Farm, Homer, NY.

. . . . .

Right now I am wearing a sweater, I had baked pumpkin for lunch with maple syrup, and instead of cooking on the grill tonight we had lamb stew in the kitchen. In my mind I am also at the beach jumping through warm waves, still riding my bike in the sun, and playing Rummy under a ceiling fan. I knew school was going to start soon when I was allowed to stay up late with my grandmother and watch Miss America. In this house, the girls are feeling nervous about the change of season. They are noisy and busy which is a nice way of saying they are driving me crazy with frequent bickering. Harriet is whipping up a batch of something and I can hear her stirring furiously and banging the measuring cups against the side of the bowl- it is her stress relief, she tells me very matter-of-factly. Soon there will be cookies and I will convince them to stop poking each other and go to bed. I wish I were more like my fun grandmother. Would she have laughed at this hour when asked how to convert ounces to grams? I said as much to Elisa and she said very reasonably and sympathetically, “It is nine o’clock at night and you don’t last that long.”