The morning is lovely. It is in the high 60’s and mostly sunny. The small breeze is just perfect. I slept in this morning. Both dogs were asleep, curled beside each other on the bed. It was after 10 before we all woke up. They knew when I woke up. Henry jumped off while Nala stretched.

I remember the house in Maine where we spent our family vacation one summer. Three memories are the strongest. My father bought lobsters one night for dinner for my mother and him. He put them on the floor, and they walked, maybe even ran, backwards. Duke, our dog, bent down to look and then kept barking. The lobsters scurried faster. My father then picked them up to save them from the dog though not from the pot.

Off the kitchen was a tiny room. A bookcase was under the window, and a couple of rocking chairs with small cloth covered pads on the seat and back were by the bookcase. I checked out the books, always glad for books. One I had never seen before. It was A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. The poems were different than any I had ever read. They were as if a child, like me, had written them. The poems told of fairies, of climbing trees, of far off places and of dreaming. I became a lover of poetry.

One rainy day, the house was noisy. I took my book and went to the car and got comfy lying down on the back seat. The rain pattered the car’s roof and dripped down the windows. I was safe and dry. I fell asleep lulled by the rain.

I have other memories of that vacation, smaller memories, like listening to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon on the radio, the sick field mouse in the yard, the small pier where the row boat was tied and the cold, cold Maine water.

This entry was posted on June 16, 2025 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.