Denoument--Marcia

Summer.

I make cucumber raita with long bumpy cukes Dan has grown in the garden.

I pick huge bunches of basil and mound it on top of ratatouille I have chunked on top of a rustic pizza crust.

Fists full of blueberries go into a pot with a little sugar and water, to be made into a syrupy reduction and poured over fresh ones and served in chilled glasses.

Maia, brown-haired, brown-eyed, with high-top Converse she's decorated herself, comes to the door and is easily ushered in and blends into the play outside in the "Land."

"Land" is an ill-used flower bed, with nothing but pebbly dirt, crab grass, some Lamb's Ears creeping in, and a nice edging of broken concrete slabs that I use to make raised beds. It is perfect for a hippo pool made from a coconut shell, a river lined with pea gravel, a dinosaur cave made of twigs, and an ancient crumbling temple made from a decapitated laughing buddha statue. A couple of Barbara Bush pearls from a broken necklace sprinkled around, and voila! Hours of fun.

We go to the pool and greet all the clusters of friends and neighbors. The mothers I know laugh and make up a plan to incorporate ourselves so that we too can go out to "Business Dinners". We call our selves "The Mamas and the Tapas." You bring the people, we'll bring the fun.

We split for dinner and wind up back at the neighbors' sitting around a patio table flickering with candles, listening to our children as they play Kick The Can, first in the Chicken Lady's yard then in ours. Back and forth they go, laughing and playing, shouting, and trampolining until the sun sets vermillion behing the pine trees.

Captain Morgan's niece is the first to go to college, he has shipped her out from Indiana for a whirlwind tour. She is eighteen and luminous. The Chicken Lady has us all say where we were and what we were doing when we were 18. The stories are amazing.

We eat taffy from a bag they bought at the coast. James puts on a tie and button down to go with his Yu-gi-yo bathing suit and bare feet. He loves the Chicken Lady. Captain pulls out his guitar and Madame Deltour does a little Marilyn Monroe riff. The stars are falling. Great showers and scatters of stars. But we don't need to get up at 4:00 AM to see them. They are all around me, blueberries, and dinosaurs, cannonballs, candles, the faces of my friends.