The summer I was eight. There is only one photograph taken of me that summer, and it was not by my mother. 15 years ago our family had nine minus two equals seven. One dad, one mom and 5 sisters. All of those little girls; lined up along the wall, a sure hand marking our height with a chewed on pencil, and connecting those dashes--a perfect staircase family, one, two, three, four, five little girls, one exhausted mother.

In that photograph I stand squinting at the camera through large plastic eyeglasses. Pink, because I was a girl, and because the red made me look terrible. The pink weren't much of a step up. Plastic, so they would last a few falls. That summer, like every summer, I had splinters in my fingers, gravel in my knees from a breathless game of tag, or a climb up the old crabapple tree. I squint at the camera and my stance is rigid. Do I stand with arms stiffly at my sides out of fear of falling off my perch? or was it because I hated to have my picture taken?

Someone else's mother took that photo. H's mother who had a backyard daycamp, or maybe one of H's sisters watched us play in the kiddie pool for a few hours, or taught us how to make shimmering bubbles out of drinking straws and twisties fixed to the end, bent into an O. The perch was another homemade invention. In my neighborhood, being a cool kid meant having a parent with brainy ideas. Ideas that wuold hold our interest for a few hours. Like the invention I was stiffly standing on in that single photograph--a jumble of tires, a snake of cables holding them together--and oh, how wonderful, to clambor up to the top and tower above your playmates. One could chant repetitively, "I'm the king of the castle! (we couldn't finish the phrase "...and you're the dirty rascal!" because it was a meanie comment and someone would inevitably tell on you, at which point you would have to give up your lofty throne of glory)

If not for that picture, I would not remember that summer at all. Summers at home, those agonizingly long months dragged on endlessly. My parents did not believe they were there to entertain us. Boredom, they felt, forced children to be inventive and creative. But, oh, the boredom. When I shut my eyes and think of summer, I feel the dead heat, hear the fly's agonizing tsssszz against the back screen door, and the feeling of time stopped still.

We were inventive. We made musical instruments out of boards sanded, with nails pounded in, and rubber bands stretched accross those nails... One day, I made a birdfeeder out of a diper wipe container, wood, and bent wires. Dangerous? of course! but a smashed thumb is nothing when the results are so satisfying! We had a trampoline in the backyard, and and endless supply of sidewalk chalk...we would draw a gigantic gameboard accross the driveway, create a die out of an old box, and we ourselves were the gamepieces. We made air popped popcorn, and sour lemonade--the sugar always would sink to the bottom.

We walked to the library across the street; we had a thirty book limit (thirty books!) The library was always intimidating. Sure, I loved sweet Mrs. B. and the hard, green shag carpet covered couches. You could get styrofoam popcorn and feed it to the paper mache pig that was seated in a rocket ship above the bookcases (he's still there!). Or get a drink from the icy-cold drinking fountain; the water was so cold! freezing! I liked books that came in series: The boxcar children, little house on the praries, all of a kind family, the babysitters' club, barenstein bears, dr. suess, james stevenson, isaac b singer's short stories, shel silverstien's poems, make way for ducklings? blueberries for sal? paul bunion? where's waldo? so many to read! so little time! The summer I was 10 I correctly guessed all the items by feeling them through a slot in a shoebox, a twig, a chicken bone (ew, gross) a peice of lego. I won a $10 gift certificate to toys r us.

Lugging a stack of books to the counter was terrifying. What if you had a lost book, or even worse, a damaged book on your record? We had a secret name for the women at the desk: The eggplant lady. In the old days, we had no computers. Every book had a pocket, and in every pocket went a blue slip with the due date, and a white card that read, "please return this item with this card in the pocket. failure to do so will result in a $1 fine". Later, My mother would collect those white cards as we walked in the door and save them in her purse until the books went back.

My sisters liked reading outside, under the crabapple, lying on a blanket. I liked reading in bed. One could always enter another world; when I read I heard nothing, saw nothing but the words in front of me, was a million miles away.

Remember that feeling of being put to bed when it was still light outside? The nights were long, and hot, but the days were neverending. Twilight in the summer lasted for eternity, especially when you were thirsty. My dad used to tell us these long boring parsha stories (why did bedtime stories invoke such a distinctive monotone?). My mother, when she tucked us in the evenings, would created wonderfully strange tales of talking trees and gorrillas and clowns. Sometimes they were scary--I remember one character, the meatball man--a collossal strand of spaggetti with meatballs for eyes and wide gaping mouth--that terrified me for a month, so much so, that I had to leave the closet light on.

I don't know if you have ever heard Bill Cosby's bedtime ruitine of his childhood in Philly. Growing up, we always shared a room with a sibling, and a menagerie of stuffed animals (all Kosher animals...Toasty, the first traif animal to enter our residence, was a gift to a child post-surgery. I guess when it came to life and death matters, my folks caved in a bit on that one!). My favorite was a graying sheep with matted fur that had not sustained the 40 million washings she/he endured all that well. If you smashed his little snout in, he/she looked like a boy in my class (or so I thought at the time!).