Posts in Summer Days
The Walk
The Walk

Since the library is closed to the public due to the pandemic, I have nowhere to spend my lunch hour. On rainy days, after I wolf down my peanut butter sandwich at my desk, I cut through the woods behind my office and duck into the grocery store where I try to spend forty-five minutes buying a bottle of soda. It has become increasingly difficult to not feel like I’m doing something wrong by loitering in the greeting card section pretending like I’m looking for the perfect birthday card or killing time in the least-shopped aisle–the one with a meager offering of generic packs of underwear and cotton tube socks sandwiched between a selection of dusty light bulbs and bottles of motor oil.

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Summer DaysJulia NusbaumAlaska, Adventure, Women, Outdoor, griefComment
Skipping Stones
Skipping Stones

At a beach on Madeline Island, my son and daughter searched for skipping stones, flat and smooth, perfectly sized to fit their little hands. They would have been six and nine that summer. We had gone to the island to sightsee, a day trip to visit a friend of my husband who had retired there. She drove us to a quiet inlet tucked safely away from the mighty waves of Lake Superior, and there we walked across the rose gold sand and there we found the stones.

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Summer DaysGuest Userfamily, memories, summer, motherComment
Arrernte Land
Arrernte Land

A jumble of buildings squatted some distance away, dark, and low. Not a sight I, at my ripe old age of eight, imagined part of Dad’s homeland. Funny how things stick in your mind, from all those years ago, still sharp now, from so many decades ago. A time of our walkabout. Through ominous towns dotted trying to overwhelm desert landscapes. So different from down south coast dairy farm where I grew up. Possible to glimpse pieces of blue-gray Ocean away in divots between hills.

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Summer DaysGuest Usermemories, childhood, father, father and daughterComment