Simple Pleasures

On a very hot day at age six or seven, I recall a cool bath, a clean (ironed!) sundress, and sitting on a blanket under a shade tree with a glass of milk and my mother’s fresh-baked cookies. I feel blessed to have memories of such moments sprinkled throughout my life.
Patricia Harley
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

My best summer memory? Riding my bike to the library near my home. It wasn’t air-conditioned, but it was always cool and dark, like a cave full of treasures, and the water fountain had the coldest water on earth. The library was old, with ugly green Naugahyde chairs and wood-plank floors that held decades’ worth of book dust and an indescribable smell. After selecting an armload, I would hop on my bike with the most irresistible of my choices open on the handlebars. Then I would crawl up into my favorite tree and eat sour green apples and read until dinner.
Vee Tannehill
Fort Wayne, Indiana

I remember swinging on my swing set. As I sailed higher and higher, I stretched out my legs, trying to make my toes touch the lilacs in bloom on the bush in front of me. The smell of lilacs always takes me back to my little-girl summers.
Pamela O’Connor
Maumee, Ohio

Listening to Bob Marley while dipping my toes in an ice-cold lake. Something about Bob always makes me think of summer.
Michelle Aprilliano
Plymouth, New Hampshire

Falling asleep on a summer evening as my dad sat on our patio listening to the Kansas City A’s game on the radio. The windows were open, I was tucked in my bed, and all was right with the world.
Cindy Tully
Mission Hills, Kansas

Every summer at my grandparents’ cottage in Michigan, we would sit around the bonfire singing a funny assortment of family songs. The night usually ended with an extended version of “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” with the family in a conga line that deposited each cousin (there are nine of us) into bunk beds in two different cottages. One year, my grandma, mischievous as ever, choo-chooed the whole line out onto the dock. We all ended up in our pajamas in the lake.
Ellen Berglund
Shaker Heights, Ohio

Each summer, beginning in early childhood, I’ve found elm trees to be the best places to lie under with a glass of iced tea and a good book. Today our ragged old tree throws an awning of shade over our bedroom’s second-floor deck. I’m 50 years old now, and you will still find me reading in my chair, enjoying the breezes under my elm tent.
Julie Larocco
Kansas City, Missouri