From the WOW Writes Writing Group - September

Prompt: What does summer bring to mind?

Rachel Robinson – Hawaiian Imagination Adventure Tour

“Can you hear the school bell clanging for the last time for at least three months??  Finally free! No books, no reading, no math!,” said the freckled red headed little first grader. “I’m going to Hawai‘i!” she said. “I’m going to have so much fun. I’ve already picked out my favorite National Geographic flicks. It’ll be me and the TV and Hawai‘i! I’m going to have so much fun walking on the green sand beach on the Big Island. I’mma gonna stay til sunset! The sun can kiss me all he likes! Then I’mma going to the black sand beach on Maui. I’m gonna roll in the sand till I’m camouflaged! I’mma gonna swim with the turtles and the monk seals! They’ll be my very best friends! I’ll be like Ariel and swim with them. I don’t even need to hold my breath. I’ll swim til the sun goes down.”  “Rachel, time for bed!,” yells Rachel’s mom.  “Well, I’ll see you later, Hawai‘i…even if only in my dreams.”

Franny French - Summer Lessons, Some Learned

It was the first time I ever had corn on the cob. It was too hot to pick up with my bare hands. Ros, my Yiddisha Mama, gave me a little scolding. She probably didn’t mean it. That was just the way mothers talked to children in the ‘70s, their own or someone else’s. Not like now, generally speaking. Ros said, “What are you doing? Use the corn holders!” I was a spacey kid and hadn’t noticed them. Outside my family circus, I didn’t know how to behave. “The corn holders!” Ros said. “Right there, Franny. If they were bears, they’d bite you!” I thought: I don’t want to get bit by a bear—do corn holders look like bears? No. Oh. There they were, in the middle of the table, looking just like tiny ears of corn. I fiddled with them. A lot. “Oh for pete’s sake,” Ros said, and began stabbing them into the ears of my corn. By then, the corn was cold enough that I just pretended to use the corn holders—too hard, too slippery with all the butter on my fingers. 

     We were eating outside in the country in Norwell, which I doubt is the country anymore. The bugs whined in the high grass, making a noise like they were the sun. The trees looked tired and hot, all their many summer leaves weighing down their branches. I had thoughts. I knew not to share them with adults, who were always saying to me, “What are you talking about?!” Like once when I announced that I’d thought up a great drink. That was at a cocktail party I got dragged to, one of many in my childhood. One of the adults said, “Oh did you? What is it?” I just knew they were going to love it—this would be the beginning of them always wanting to know what I thought. I spoke up loud: “A champagne martini!” My mother raked a hand through her hair. “Where on God’s green earth do you get these ideas? That would be a terrible drink.” “Awful!” said someone else. 

     In Norwell, eating corn on the cob for the first time, I kept the thought to myself that each kernel looked like a tiny gravestone. During dessert, I excused myself to go inside and use the bathroom, where I had another great idea. I’d been planning to try it out. Now was my chance. I was going to pee standing up, like boys do. My pee got all over the floor. I panicked. How did it not work? I tried to clean it up with toilet paper. That was not working either. I turned off the light and left, deciding to pretend I didn’t do it and that if anyone asked, I would say I had no idea.

Lisa - Summer

Summer is hot too hot.

In which I feel the heat

Even though my AC unit 

Is blowing nonstop 

The days are longer 

Which means more 

Hours to me of sunlight 

Which as a person who 

The sunlight effect. 

Summer is long but I love the light

Through my windows 

I spend most of the time indoors

Due to my health 

And only go out certain times.

But this year a UV umbrella 

Helps some what 

Each summer I day dream of Fall

Because I wish to go outside

And sit. And enjoy the fresh air 

I love the view of outside 

Where I live 

But summer steals all of that

From me. 

Oh summer, summer go away 

and don't return until years from

Now. My dear sweet summer.

Dulcie Witman - The No-tell Mo-tel

I started work young—thirteen, I think. Chambermaid at the Redwood Motel. It did not go so well.  In fact I hated it. While others, including my sister, seemed to gain pleasure from making the bathroom shine, I wiped it down with the dirty towels that were lying around and then jumped onto the king sized bed, pried open the Magic Fingers and snagged a few quarters. Then I’d pop them back in, turn on the color TV and go for a ride. 

     We were allowed thirty minutes to a room, 14 rooms in a day. That left half an hour for loading and unloading our carts. My formula went like 10 minutes for the room, 20 minutes for whatever else I wanted to do. And while I may have gone home with a few extra quarters in my pocket, I mostly used them. I don’t so much recall enjoying the jiggling buzzing Magic Fingers as I liked the idea of getting paid to lie in a bed while it worked and I watched TV.  

     I was worked hard at home, cleaning, washing dishes, ironing, barn chores. At home, I felt like a slave. I tied a bandana on my head in silent protest to the indoor work, and I ate the thumbs off my mittens as the outdoor version. While neither seemed to garner the response I wanted from my owners, they both made me feel better. But at work at the Redwood Motel, well that was a different story. The rooms were small and my mother wasn’t going around behind checking to see if I vacuumed underneath things.  

     It was exciting to be in the city in a motel; being from a small New England town, I had not spent much time in Burlington and I had never stayed in a motel. I thought motels were mostly for prostitutes and so I would imagine the sordid commerce that had taken place hours before my arrival. It was while engrossed in this very scenario that I must have slipped off and I did not come back until my manager was standing by the bed as I opened my eyes. I was disoriented at first thinking that this was my mother yelling at me that I was going to be late for school but something was off as I threw the unfamiliar covers off me and sat up. 

     So I had to go get another job—next up came the box factory.