Summer Night

The walk began at dusk, the elegant black iron street lights just beginning to flicker on. I pay homage to my grandmother by walking to her old house, a small white cape cod with blue shutters they built  just after the war in 1946 – paid for with money my grandfather won from playing craps on the returning troop ship. The weather has finally broken and the night is cooler, a slight breeze rustles around me and the dog –  the dog named after my grandmother’s own Irish tribe – the Callaghan's. With the darkness comes the lights of the houses illuminating lives within, some with huge television screens - their bluish light showing through gauzy curtains and I think to myself, “Come out here, look what you are missing, you will not remember that TV program when you look back over your life but you would remember this summer night – if you are lucky you may just catch a glimpse of your childhood.”

I skirt around my grand-parents corner house and continue on to the street where I grew up. The huge oak tree still stands guard near my house – spreading its branches over the near-by homes as if a mother gathering her brood of children into the safety of her arms.  I close my eyes and breathe deeply and am eight years old or nine or ten. The cicadas and crickets are joyous in their chorusing and I wonder are these the offspring of the cicadas and crickets I heard as a child? I wonder too just as I pass in front of my childhood home, glancing up at my bedroom window, “Is there a little girl right now on this street curled up in bed, savoring a good book, listening to these melodious night creatures through the whirr of a window fan?"  And will she walk these streets 40 years from now as I do right now and be thankful for this gift of a summer night?