Swimming on a hot summer day. Labor Day to be exact. It was hotter than Hadies today. I have to compare it to a Labor Day in my childhood when bitsy little snowflakes were spitting at us. Us kids HAD to swim. When we were kids, we swam EVERY day. Hot or cold, calm or windy as hell, rainy, whatever. Spitting snow. Yes we were gonna swim. Later that day we had to move to town and the next day was the first day of school. I remember The Commander down there life-guarding us in a winter jacket and Otto, my dad’s buddy and father of some of my beach friends.

It was so hot today I had to sit on the back deck next to the grill to read this afternoon. It was the only place not in the sun. I eventually swam after my older beach urchin arrived and we ate dinner with the neighbor-cousins. Dinner was kebabs and corn and potato salad and garlic bread and green salad. And blueberry crisp for dessert courtesy of my cousin. Preceded by a ‘hattan or two. We swam between dinner and dessert and I still feel wonderful and uber clean after our beautiful dip into the fresh water of Gitchee Gumee.

I was remembering a night long ago when I was up here alone with The Commander. It was hotter than hell (like today) and my aunt Radical Betty and I made a plan for an evening swim. I encountered my other aunt Bubs (she and Betty were my dad’s sisters) and I asked her if she wanted to join us. She said… Maybe… As it turned out, the three of us did swim. By that I mean we all walked out past the second sandbar until the water was up to our necks, hung out a bit and headed back in. I miss those two women and their brothers.

Love y’all, KW.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2023 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.