Three Summer ‘R’s’

 

These summer months in Tennessee have brought family and friends to our home as they traveled from one place to another. South Carolina to Colorado. Texas to Vermont. Florida to Mississippi to Ohio to New York. Michigan to Ohio to Tennessee to Michigan. We’re in the perfect position to nab them as they travel on I-65 and share a evening or two of fleeting quality time.

 

Though, some stay longer.

 

This morning I was up at 4:45 baking brownies for our friends to enjoy on their trip back to Michigan. They’ve been here for ten days spending time with our disabled daughter while we were away, and when we returned, with us as a family. Food, games, laughs, long talks and an ER visit that was thrown in for good measure, were shared. The ER visit proved to be a God-send. Discovery that our daughter’s three pulmonary embolisms had disappeared with the treatment of Xeralto over the last three months. Thank you, God and physicians!

 

Bossman and I missed the field trip to the ER. We were in D.C. attending the stunning and somber ceremony in Arlington Cemetery of the funeral for Bossman’s brother, Major G. R. Dunham. His widow, daughters, son-in-law, aunt, cousins, mother-in-law, Bossman and I all stayed together in two enormous suites in a Wyndham timeshare at National Harbor. Treasured family bonding was experienced by all.

 

After our Michigan friends headed out this morning at 6:30 and Bossman left to play golf, I felt the need to visit my past.

 

I grew up in the ’50’s in a small village in upstate New York. All my relations lived within walking distance. Hot summer days were greeted with the women getting out the hose and washing down the front porch or stoop and the sidewalk. I remember my Nanny Donovan, neighbor ladies and Mom with the green hose, and pointy nozzle hosing down the dust, dirt, bugs and grass clippings from the porches and sidewalks.

 

So, I did that this morning. Pulling the hose up the steps I shot water at the cobwebs, the wasps, the grass clippings and the dirt. Brick and cement turned dark as the water washed over them and the old dirt and cobwebs dripped over the porch and ran down into the mulch that drank it all up. Blades of mowed grass, nudged out of corners of steps, washed away into the street.

 

The fragrance of wet brick, water, humidity and grass were a natural cologne in this morning’s summer heat. A prescription for calm.

 

Relief. Reflection. Relaxed.