Revisiting Summer with a Child

The Boston Herald

She had a chart in her room and was marking off days. I had a chart in my head and was doing the same. Then Sunday finally arrived. Xena didn't pack much for her summer at my house. She didn't need much - just shorts, jeans, a few T-shirts, a book, writing paper, some craft things. She set up camp in my daughter's old room. Then she was beside me talking about her friends Elspie and Amaran and school and Mr. Wall and what she'll be learning in the fall when she begins sixth grade.

Xena is just 12 and not in a hurry to be 13. She is still more child than almost teen, sweet and eager to please, not yet indifferent to what doesn't involve her, not yet easily bored.

I said to her Sunday night: "What are you going to do all day when I'm in my office? Won't you miss your friends?" And she said: "I'll read, go for a walk, watch TV. And I have you. You're my friend. Don't worry about me, Beverly. I'll be fine.”

Her first morning here, I was at the kitchen table reading the papers and she was reading her book and I started telling her about the Irish Famine Memorial, what it meant and how so many Irish died of hunger during the Great Famine of 1847. I told her about the potato blight and her ears stood up because this kid loves potatoes; they're her favorite food because her father grows potatoes on their land. And though she's never seen a blight she remembers the summer that the field of lettuce her father planted wilted and died.

I told her about the Irish who left Ireland because they had no food and how they came in steerage to America where they were ridiculed and hated. I showed her the newspaper picture of the sculptures made for the memorial. And I told her about the Freedom Trail and about Tom Flatley and how he was born in Ireland and came to America and is the man behind the memorial.

"Does he still like potatoes?" was the only question she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Why?"

"Well, if he saw them all black and rotten in the fields then had to take a horrible boat ride to America because of them maybe he doesn't like them anymore.”

I laughed out loud, not because according to Xena's calculations Tom Flatley has to be at least 160 years old, but because she didn't calculate. Because when you're 12, 1847 isn't much different from 1947. Old is old and the past is the past and one war is the same as all wars. That's how kids see it. I had forgotten this.

I have forgotten a lot, but I have all summer to relearn.

Already I've relearned that grocery shopping can be, if not exactly No. 1 on the fun chart, at least tolerable when there's a child to go with you, to run ahead and pick out what she wants. Already I've relearned the joys of junk food. The candy jar is full again. There are Fudgsicles in the freezer, Honey Nut Cheerios on the shelf, yellow American cheese, not some low-fat hybrid, in the refrigerator and white bread, not wheat or rye, in the bread drawer.

There's a reason to make waffles in the morning and to get books from children's room at the library. There's an excuse to read Roald Dahl again, and to watch "Mary Poppins" and "Anne of Green Gables" and to go for long walks to nowhere special.

In the car, I turn off talk radio to listen to Xena. The anger of the outside world disappears, all the flap about teachers and tests gone. There is only Xena and her words, which make me smile

"I'm so glad I'm here, Beverly."

"I'm so glad you're here, too, Xena."