Third Summer Nap

Dust motes dance in the sunbeam that slants across my bed. I’m lying on my back, my legs in the air. First I wave them freely about then I walk my bare feet up the wall, going higher and higher until my hips leave the bed. Suddenly, I lose my balance and I fall back with a resounding thump. Mommy calls out from the kitchen,
“What are you doing in there? You are supposed to be taking a nap”.
“I’m not tired,” I call back.
“Then just lie still for fifteen minutes and rest your eyes. Just fifteen minutes and then I’ll let you get up”
I grimace and wiggle some more, eyes wide open. I don’t want to sleep. It is summer and the side yard is full of wild strawberries to eat and daisies to pick. A breeze smells sweet as it gently flows through my bedroom window. I am too young to know if the fragrance is from the clover and sweet peas outside or from the freshly laundered and starched gingham curtains that move with the current of air. I don’t even wonder I simply accept it as part of the delight of this perfect summer day, I could not yet conceive of any more to come, not tomorrow, not next month, not next year.

It is my third summer but I am experiencing it as my first, a year is a concept that I haven't yet grasped, I remember no other summer. Every joy, every touch, every taste, every smell is wondrous and new. The smell of fresh cut grass is not laden with nostalgia and memories when you are only three. It is the first delicate scent on the first day of the first summer ever. The first time my bare feet touch the lawn and I feel it’s tickling delight an unbidden giggle bubbles up. The metallic taste of water drunk directly from the garden hose astonishes my tongue. Digging in dirt, capturing a ladybug, the prick of the berry bush, all are new, all are remarkable, all waiting while minutes stretch like hours before me.

I couldn’t sleep; I wouldn’t sleep, not on my one and only perfect summer day.