Blueberries and Bivalves

In summer I go a bit feral. What can I say, I like it when the grass grows high. My wild side is still there in winter, but it's a little less constant than it is these last days of August. Right about now I am fully an outdoor cat-- slipping through the screen door only to circle the kitchen, perhaps sip a saucer, and then right back out.

There has been a chill in the air these last days. This is the time of year when the colors return to sunsets, that peachy glow, oranges deepening into dusk. In the high season, the days last long enough that they end without note. They fade down on ever-so-gentle dimmer. It is light and then it is still light and then there is less light and then it is night. But when the gauzey white starts to pack itself up, the edges of the days again match the hues found in the fields. If you sit with them, sometimes it can feel like clarity.

But the season is not done yet-- the kids are still covered in mosquito bites and their poison ivy rashes are still migrating to new, little swatches.

  A few weeks back, around sunset, my husband and i took them to what we thought would be an al fresco pizza party only to discover it had morphed into a movie screening. Whether it was first cut or the second or third i cannot say. It will be on Netflix in a few weeks.

We were on our annual summer visit to a friend and the year before we had gone to a thing at this house and it was loose and fun. Children tumbled down the hill, adults babbled at one another while looking down from the bluff and across the Atlantic. We mingled and made friends for the evening. The kids stuffed themselves and then lay comatose in our laps on the lawn. It felt like summer.

This year when we arrived, it was only the host, a helper and a couple from California sitting in Adirondack chairs. I thought maybe the party had already ended. 'It just started', we were told. 'Everyone is inside.'

We stayed out. The kids entertained themselves jumping off a small stone wall and found food. My bivalve loving 4 year old sucked down a dozen raw little necks intended for clam pizza. My son had three helpings of blueberry pie, two-thirds of which coated his chubby cheeks. He was what he ate.

Lost in licking crust and compote from the webbing of his fingers, my blueberry boy dropped the last fistful into the grass. I scooped it up, weeded it, and put it back in his paw. The California couple smiled, a tinge of concern not diminishing their amusement.

'Clearly, you are not a Santa Monica Parent,' the man offered. We shared a laugh.

I suppose not, I said.

-Taylor