Sometimes when I'm falling asleep at night, I think maybe I'll wake up in the morning and be a kid again. It's probably nothing short of normal, but I have, since, graduating college felt the sting of the reality of growing up. And there's something about a humid summer night, with only an oscillating fan for relief, that reminds me of childhood. Maybe it doesn't help that I gave up on the idea of holding onto my queen bed for being married some day and returned to a twin, for which I have one old pale pink fitted-sheet from when I was a kid. Laying there, sometimes I slip into thinking, what if I wake up tomorrow and I'm nine again? Nine was a good age, I think. You were still your own person, with reckless abandon.
Today at the beach, I failed to restrain a chuckle as this dad with two children, very close in age, struggled to calm them from the vicious, apparently contagious cry-cycle they were inflicting on one another. I watched his valiant effort to calm and re-dress them while whichever one he wasn't paying attention to burst into crocodile tears. I chuckled, but not out of a mean spirit; rather, I appreciated that this father dared to go it [to the beach] alone. Think me not insensitive, I assumed he was simply taking them on an outing and not forced by some tragic circumstance to parent alone this way all the time. I appreciated him.
My dad, and again not to slight him in any way, was not much of a kid person. I always say I think he likes us a lot better now that we're adults. His version of such an outing was to take us to the Y with him, while he got in a workout, we swam endlessly - and cheerfully - in the pool. On the way home was a Super A, and dad's treat was to stop and let us each get a can of Super America brand pop. There was something extra-good about that soda, even still I think nothing can quite compare. Oddly Shasta is the only thing that's ever quite come close. I think I drank a lot of grape soda back then, but there was also a strawberry-kiwi or watermelon-something...that was dad's excursion, albeit a relatively safe one.
I have what feel to be infinite memories of getting home in the summer time from a family vacation where we roadtripped somewhere. It was usually hot and sticky; it was usually July, sometimes to Duluth and back for Independence day. We always brought our own pillows with us, all piled into the car. Being Losiers, we left late and got home late, so I was almost always asleep when we finally arrived. I learned the feel of the car slowing down on our exit, and my body would wake just enough to sense that we were minutes from the comfort of home. I knew the right, then the hot-left, then the other right, and up into the driveway. I'd sit up and sleepily verify my inferences, looking through the windshield at the house number on the garage, lit by the floodlight above it. 1110.
We'd always unpack the car of at least the essentials. I remember that feeling of mellow-dramatically trekking the stairs to my room, and the sweet relief of plopping on my belly into my familiar, welcoming bed.
Sometimes, in the summer, I imagine that I will wake tomorrow in my white, four-post bed, in my bedroom with the blue wallpaper with little pink bows all over, and stumble downstairs to pour a bowl of Berry Kix.
