River

It's the beginning of March and I'm sitting on my uncle Kevin's front porch in a tank top and shorts. I think we hit 80 degrees today. The older I get the more I love summer, and this right here - writing with my bare legs in the sunshine - is nothing short of perfection.

It's weird being here again. I haven't been back since my grandma died in '08 (seven years in a couple weeks), and it doesn't feel the same with her gone. When we were growing up it was always the thing to do to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house; aunts came and went, uncles moved, but the white house on Orange Valley Circle was always home base. Wake up in the room with the Samantha American Girl doll, go to the dining room for cereal and orange juice made from the oranges picked across the street, swim in Miss Edith and Miss Hazel's pool next door until the afternoon Florida rain chased us home. We'd watch TV, play with the train set on the glassed-in back porch, go bowling, play mini golf, and get our fill of sunshine until the next time we visited.

Everyone else is still here. Nothing else has really changed. But it's not the same. My uncle has some of my grandma's old furniture: the green chair and desk - the one with the Churchmouse books - I think her end tables, the swivel recliner, maybe her quilts. Her masterpieces of cloth strips and patterned stitches are the common link we have to her. We were at my grandpa's house yesterday and I wondered if the quilt on his chair was hers, but I doubt it.

I doubt his new wife lets any of Nancy's things in her house.

It's probably just as well. The quilts on my bed back home don't smell like her anymore; I doubt the ones here have kept her scent either.