Back to the sweet consistent truth of reality (sweet in that truth is reliably itself, and sweet because my people are home.) Dear Boy has a mouth-full of metal, not only in a musical sense. Dear girl is arranging her own social life these days, whisking around in a blue wigged blur. My camera left for vacation without me, and returned home to unpack four images, each a variation on this theme:

See all those knees? The knees move me. Of course, mid May in the South Sea Islands isn't going to be all that hot. You can tell these dear folks sitting on the porch in the shade aren't exactly sweating. When we went to the beach when I was a girl it was always blazing hot--a kind of dehydrated perpetual inescapable hot which would truly defy the imagination of my children. They've never experienced anything like it with their ready access to a/c, a constant flow of appropriate drinks, and parents who prefer to vacation in the civility of off-season. But this picture puts me in mind of a time when no one would ever consider putting on long legged light weight cotton pjs. They hadn't even been invented yet. My childhood was bare kneed the whole season, naugahyde vinyl, barely potable tap water, and ice houses. Ice houses sound like relief but smelled like the fish house next door and, in any case, offered a product verboten insofar as children were concerned. Ice picks are "dangerous", styrofoam coolers must remain closed, and ice was only for making Salty Dogs or Canadian Club on the rocks.