The Last Day of May

I am sitting outside of a local deli with my husband and son. It’s the last day of May, a sunny and warm day at the end of a rainy and cold month. The sky is blue and the breeze is slight enough to lift my hair every so often.

Josh complains that he’s too hot in the sun, and Adam and I look at each other and smile. It’s seventy degrees and sunny, but Josh is four-not-quiet-five and finicky in his own way. He sips his blue Gatorade and asks for us to open the umbrella at our table. Adam does but we came to sit in the sunshine, so he closes it back down and I tell Josh to take my chair. The umbrella’s shadow on my seat is enough shade for him.

Adam and I each have a pint of Sam Adam’s Summer Ale. We clink glasses and take a sip. “It’s always better on draft,” he says, and I nod and smile.

We used to do this a lot when we lived in Alabama – find a place to sit outside, a place that served cold beer and offered a bit of fresh air. One place in particular was our favorite – Wintzell’s, an oyster restaurant that served draft beers for a dollar each from four to seven each weekday. At last once a week, we’d drive downtown to Wintzell’s and have a few beers. We’d sit in the high-top tables on the sidewalk and talk for hours.

That was before we had kids, before going out to restaurants became a juggling act and the kids’ food started costing almost as much as ours. When Lily was first born, one of our first trips out as a family was to Callaghan’s, an Irish pub a few blocks from our house. We put our tiny baby in the stroller and walked to the restaurant while she slept. I had a giant burger and a beer. Adam sat Lily on his lap when she woke and I snapped a photo. She wore a floppy pink hat and yellow dress with a frog on it. That was eight years ago. 

There was just a sliver of time that is perfect for eating outside. In the Deep South, the temps rush from tolerable to unbearably hot and humid much too quickly. Not unlike the rush of temps in the opposite direction as winter descends on Upstate New York. We’ve learned to take advantage when we can.

Today we sit outside and eat our lunches in the sunshine in small town near the lake, a town so small it has only one restaurant, one park, a yacht club, and a tiny church. At noon, the church bells signal the time, then proceed to chime out a hymn we sang at our church a few weeks ago. I recognize the melody, but can’t think of the words.

“Where is that sound coming from?” Josh asks.

“The church around the corner,” I reply. “Isn’t it pretty?”

He nods. “Those cushions are pretty too,” he adds, looking at the chairs beside the restaurant door. “We could sit over there, if we want. There’s three chairs.”

I glance at them. The cushions are a tropical flower pattern, big red flowers with long, leafy stems. I laugh and say, “Maybe next time.”

We finish eating, then drive to the park to look at the lake. The water level is high on Lake Ontario, higher than its been in a hundred years, and it’s causing a fair share of problems. We check on it from time to time.

At this particular park, we like to scavenge for pretty rocks. The beach is full of them – pink ones, gray ones, some that are striped. Instead of fifteen feet of beach, today it’s about five. Josh brings a rock to me, one that’s half gray and half pink. “Take a picture of it,” he says, so I pull out my phone.

Then I walk to the edge of the water despite the signs saying not to go in. I step out on the wet stones and let the cold water splash up on my toes and feet and ankles and calves for the first time this year. “Eep,” I cry. “It’s cold.”

“Forty-five degrees,” Adam says. He sits on the bench looking out at the water. I look too. It’s mostly calm and the bluish-turquoise color that always amazes me, this place we return to, the lake. I step back, give my feet a break from the chill. 

I wonder if we’ll swim this year. The lake levels are so high one of our favorite beaches is washing away. Adam’s parents’ house on this same lake is a swamp of backed up water and their dock is underwater. We’re lake people, and we wonder what’s next.

But Josh collects more rocks and makes a pile of them on the grass. He wants to step into the water too, but he’s too scared. We’re not here to swim, just to breathe the cool lake air, and he takes my hand as we walk away. He could do this all day. I could too.