This morning feels like a summer morning. Outside is hot, but the house holds a bit of the cooler night. The rooms are dark. Out my window, I can nothing is moving in the still air. The sky is blue, and the sky is cloudy. The high today will be 74°.

My father graduated from high school when he was sixteen. It was 1943. He wanted to enlist right away, but his mother wouldn’t sign the papers. He had to wait until his seventeenth December birthday when he didn’t need permission. My father went into the navy. In the pictures of him after bootcamp, he looks so young, a baby, metaphorically. He was assigned to a ship which plied the North Sea. In 1944, his ship was sunk, broken in half. My father was in the cold water a long time before he was rescued. He was brought to a hospital in England. The doctors worried about saving his legs, but they did. My dad told us he was still in the hospital when casualties from D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge were admitted. They all said U.S. forces were being overwhelmed. That was the only memory my father had of D-Day.

My mother once had a D-Day party. In the living room she had The Longest Day playing on the TV. In the kitchen the music of World War II played, and everyone sang along. Around the house were maps of the Normandy coast with the landing points highlighting. She had found decorations, cardboard soldiers, lots of American flags and even smaller flags sticking from the food on the table. The party was perfect.

Now that I have a car, I don’t mind staying home.

Today is summer. It is already 81°. The morning is still and quiet. Nala was panting when she came back inside the house after her romp. She is now comfy on the couch. It is time for her morning nap.

Yesterday was a normal day. I drove, yup, drove, to my uke lesson then I had my hair cut. I’m working on crossing off all the errands I couldn’t do without a car. I feel free.

When I was a little kid, we went to visit one of my father’s relatives, an aunt I think. She lived on a pond. I remember an old rowboat filled with flowers was in the yard by the pond as were wooden Adirondack chairs. We, my brother and I, asked if we could go swimming. We stripped down to our underwear to swim as we didn’t have bathing suits. I remember there was tall grass by the side of the pond and water lilies floating. I didn’t know how to swim yet so I mostly walked in the water. When we got out of the pond, my mother took one look at my brother and me and screamed. Blood suckers were on our chests and legs and had made themselves comfortable dining al fresco. My father pulled them off. My mother just stayed horrified. I was mostly curious.

We have black and white pictures of a vacation in New Hampshire. I was probably around three. I do remember there was a screened porch, and we were on a lake. In one of the pictures my brother and I are sitting on the top of a very small waterfall. We were all smiles. I remember the moving water we sat on tickled and sort of tingled our legs. It made me laugh.

One other vacation picture, also black and white, brings back a few memories. We were in Islesboro, Maine. In the picture I look around ten maybe eleven. I’m leaning against a tree on a small hill. The picture taker was below me so the picture angle is weird. I look long and tall. I am wearing a visor. I remember that visor. It was white. I loved it and wore it that whole summer. I wore it everywhere until it wasn’t wearable anymore.