Summertime

I think we all have something that characterizes our summers growing up. Of course, lots of things happen during the summer that we probably always participated in- street festivals, county fairs, Fourth of July parties and parades- but I think everyone has that one special thing that they did every summer when they were kids that really stood out. Some went to summer camp and treasure the memories, as they went from campers to junior counselors to counselors. My mom, for instance, spent time every summer with her twin visiting her grandma. She cherishes those memories so much that I feel like I was right there with her after hearing the precious stories.

The highlight of my summer was getting a visit from my cousin Jessica. Everyone calls us twin cousins. Not because our family has some sort of questionable and illegal morals. But because she was born five days before me and we are really quite alike. The best compliment I get is when I hear that we look like sisters or someone (besides myself) mistakens a picture of her for me.

We got along great as kids. Neither of us was particularly a girly-girl, we both had wild imaginations that took us to the craziest places, and we just got each other in a way that no one else can. We have other best friends who mean the world to us, but we've both got a little bit of "cooky" in us that I think only we can get... and it is probably only brought out by the two of us being together. We'd have inside jokes within minutes and when one of us said one word, the other knew the rest of the thought and we'd burst into giggles that made the rest of the family think we were laughing about nothing. Really at that time, when we were together, we even forgot there was a rest of the family.

To this day, we still say the same absolutely random thing at the same time, one will start a thought and the other will finish it without thinking about it, and we still laugh until we're in pain at the mutter of one word because the other one knows exactly what the other is thinking. It used to make our mothers paranoid that we were laughing at them, but we never were. We just didn't have to complete our thoughts to get the point across.



It's an incredible bond that I imagine sisters have. I feel blessed to share that with her and make sure to make that as clear as possible.

So now that I've done my best to introduce Jessica, I'm trying to narrow this post down to just one of our many, many memories.

So when we were about 11-years-old, Jessica came up with her dad. We felt too cool for school because, even though I lived in the same town as our grandparents, I'd packed my stuff up and stay at their house with her during the visit. That way, I could feel like I was getting a mini-vacation, too. Plus, our grandparents and her dad spent the days golfing meaning the house was all ours. For the sake of our pride, though it is documented on tape, I won't go into much detail about what we did during the day. I'll just be vague and say we made skits. Other than that, I'm going to skip over to the part where I hated that Jessica loved soap operas, but somehow she managed to suggest that we have lunch during Days of Our Lives. This involved the two of us making sandwiches, finding chips and some sort of frozen treat deluxe, then taking it to the living room and eating them on TV trays from, like... 1801. This killed me. I'm still traumatized by this event. I wanted to look through photo albums instead. I think what killed me more was, no matter how many times we unfolded those trays in our lifetimes, we still struggle with putting them back. Totally don't get it.

So our grandparents and Jessica's dad spent their time during the day golfing for some tournament and at the end of the week, there was a fancy-shmancy dinner. That was our favorite night. We had the house to ourselves until way after dinner was over and that meant making pizza (and cutting it with scissors. Jessica could never get over that), watching our favorite movies (Baby Sitters Club by Disney, anyone? We mostly liked to put it on mute and insert our own words), dancing to whatever music we could find, most often Grease, and doing my big scheme.

I always thought it was so clever, remember I was only 10, although we did this a couple of times, for us to go curl up in Grampa's humongous bed when we were starting to get sleepy and expected them home. We watched Nick At Night, which had Dick Van Dyke and I Love Lucy and maybe Bewitched on it. We'd get all cozy, and the moment that we heard the door open, we'd shut our eyes and act like we'd been sleeping all night because I just thought that was the most hilarious scheme. I wanted to know what Grampa would do to kick us, his "Little Girls" (that was our official nickname) out. However, it usually ended up backfiring. Gramma would come swaying in, showing some after effects of her wine, and take her jewelry off (I saw this through my squinted eyes) and leave the room. Jessica and I would look at each other and smile, then close our eyes when we heard Grampa's feet heading for the door. It took all I had not to laugh. It was killing me to know what he might do. Turn off the TV? Turn on the alarm? Make Uncle Mel wake us up? Poke us in the faces? Talk loud like we aren't sleeping? Let us have his huge comfy bed?!? The possibilities!!

Well, I heard him stroll into his room. When I thought it was safe, I squinted my eyes and watched him take his cuff links off and noticed his evening jacket was already off. He sat down to take his socks off.... this was definitely not going to plan. He was preparing for bed as if his two Little Girls weren't already settled in it! He didn't bother us or anything!

My memory says that I'd wait until he left the room for something and Jessica and I would realize the jig was up and leave so Grampa could have his bed. We had spent the whole evening expecting something great to happen, all we got was normalcy. However, when her dad realized we were awake, we were treated to 12" golf bags and golf clubs made entirely of chocolate. Now that was a pick-me-up!