Summer
I have such great summer memories: swimming; going for bike rides with my friends; visiting relatives (the ones you only see once a year); camping; riding the ferry; cook-outs; some-mores by a campfire; ice cream; Old Orchard Beach, and so much more! But I also remember summer as a time when I could walk to the library and take out books that were not school assignments. I would leave the library with an armful of books to read while sitting on the front steps when it was too hot to be indoors or to read while all the grown up relatives talked about "how time flies". I could choose any book or author that I wanted and had such fun learning about the Hardy Boys, the March sisters, Agatha Christie's English mysteries, and Edgar Allen Poe's dark stories. I imagined myself as a cast-away and being alone from all the commotion of living in a household of 5 children when I read Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, or Gulliver's Travels. And then there the books that changed the way I looked at things: To Kill a Mockingbird, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities.
Once I found a story I really liked, I would look for more books by the same author which is why I read all I could find by Jules Verne after reading A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Ray Bradbury after reading All Summer in a Day. (I credit for my interest in teaching science to my love of science fiction stories and still like to see "new" inventions that were actually written about in these books many years ago.) Other favorites included Mark Twain of Tom Sawyer fame and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories and I read these over and over! I remember the adventures I lived while reading The Three Musketeers and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that kept me up until way past lights out- reading under the covers with a flashlight.
To me, summer is still about family fun and being able to relax but also about having the freedom to enjoy as many books as possible. I hope this summer brings all of my "Raymond Family" time to enjoy each others' company, some time to relax, and lots of time to read for the fun of it.
