All I want to do is bake. Which is weird for middle of the summer hobbies, right? But I scoop cookbook after cookbook off library shelves and plot which chocolate-y mess we’ll make next. The kids aren’t complaining.

This might be the last summer her hair turns white blonde and I’m trying to soak it in while I can. Each strand gets wiry from endless pool time, sun soaking, and hasty shower and then contrasts sharply against her rapidly deepening tan. Sunscreen and mosquito repellent lays thick on all of our skin and…

Their legs look so long, their expressions so old. Suddenly I don’t have a baby anymore and it feels really disorienting.

Everyone else complains about there being too much singing, but I secretly love it. Elena agrees with me.

Wilting wreath: check. Light colored dress: check. Cold front requiring hoodies and hats? Who would have guessed.

It’s hotter than an inner circle of hell outside, but they keep insisting our inflatable pool is “too cold!” and laying on the sweltering, black asphalt. I have a niggling fear I’ll have to scrape them off with a spatula if they stay there too long.

As June flies through our lives, the heat gets turned up and suddenly it’s not so nice to be outside again.

The heat and stickiness of the day, the endless whining of the kids, the long drive to the nursery. But now: other, more vivid memories crowd those out. Wandering through a small forest of trees to pick the perfect Maple, picking out more flowers to plant in the backyard, talking in the car as the…

By the time you were born, Mom had embraced her back to the earth, hippy side and decided as your older sisters, we should be allowed to attend the birth: that it was a beautiful, natural thing. Our twelve-year-old sister was hesitantly agreeable to the idea, but at ten, I was ecstatic. What an adventure!…