Tomorrow is Josie's last day of school and it has me remembering when I was her age and the joy that summer vacation brought.
Summer meant going to the beach with my parents for a week or sometimes two. And it meant going barefoot, something I wasn't allowed to do at home for fear of hookworms. Sandcastles, drip castles, shell-collecting, jumping up and down in the gentle waves of the Gulf of Mexico, playing shuffle-board--an ubiquitous feature of beach rentals, watching pelicans glide in dignified files just above the waves . . . the beach back then in the early Fifties was full of delights and there were no towering condominiums.
And the rest of the summer stretched out before me in a warm haze . . . playing outside with the kids on the block till lightning bugs rose up out of the grass and mothers began to call us home in spite of our protests that it wasn't dark yet and we could still see, riding my bike, reading Oz books and Nancy Drew in my hideout under a bush in the yard . . . no classes, no planned activities, no schedule . . . it was a time of dolce far niente--the sweetness of doing nothing.
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