the last summer

summer 1987: David, 3 and Dan, 2

Sometimes it feels like we are dorm-mates, Katie and me.

Her room is on the front corner of the house, my study is on the back, the smallest bedroom which was her room from the day she came home from the hospital until enough brothers had left home to choose a different room.

We each tinker on our computers, write in our journals and read. The upstairs comes alive in summer when Katie is home,

her giggles floating down the hall as she reads something funny.

She runs her laundry, pads up and down the stairs with a snack

and checks in with me on this or that.

Katie's brothers have really truly left, tending to their own lives and careers,

but Katie is still partly mine with one more year of college.

I know this could be our last summer together upstairs, as it probably should be. Haller kids don't stay around long once they finish college.

Darn it, they figure out that the world offers more excitement
and opportunity than the old neighborhood and off they go.

When we moved into this house 21 summers ago, we spent long days at the pool, the town ballfields, and Dairy Depot for ice cream.

I served watermelon in the backyard, homemade popsicles

on the front porch, and cut kids' hair on the deck.

Chapter books were read in the hammock out back.

I helped the kids to grow a garden and
taught them how to ride a two-wheeler.

Summer 1992

With four kids, summer was intense in every way.

The food, the dishes, the undone chores, the slamming doors

and endless bickering all marked summers in this house.

We chased the dog and the ice cream truck.
We awaited vacations at Fireside Inn with feverish anticipation.

More band-aids were administered in one summer
than I now use in five years.

The kids ran lemonade stands and played bicker-ball

in the front yard until fireflies pierced the deepening dusk. 

The boys first learned to cut grass in wobbly rows 

and practiced shooting hoops on the drive. 

My four needed baths every night to wash away

the sweat and grit from long, hot days of play.

We'd help them into their cotton jammies,

comb their sweet hair just right, then read a story

and pray while the crickets sang my babes to sleep.

Dan fishing at Grand Lake, Michigan 1997

Gradually they went from whiffle ball to wives and babies of their own.

And so, this being the last summer with a "child" at home,
I pray I will embrace new summers
without slamming doors,
of grass grown over home plate out front,
and the anticipation of serving popsicles to grandchildren
on the front porch.