Girls of summer 夏日女孩

We lived on the banks of the Tennessee River, and we owned the summers when we were girls. We ran wild throughhumid（潮湿的，湿润的）summer days that never ended but only melted one into the other. We floated down rivers of weekdays with no school, no rules , no parents, and noconstructs（构图，建筑物）other than our fantasies. We were good girls, my sister and I. We had nothing to rebel against. This was just life as we knew it, and we knew the summers to be long and to be ours.

The road that ran past our house was a one-lane rural route. Every morning, after our parents had gone to work, I'd wait for the mail lady topull up to（追上）our box. Some days I would put enough change for a few stamps into amason jar（玻璃瓶）lid and leave it in the mailbox. I hated bothering mail lady with thistransaction（交易，办理）, which made her job take longer. But I liked that she knew that someone in our house sent letters into the outside world.

I liked walking to the mailbox in my bare feet and leaving footprints on thedewy（带露水的）grass. I imagined that feeling the wetness on the bottom of my feet made me a poet. I had never read poetry, outside of some Emily Dickinson. But I imagined that people who knew of such things would walk to their mailboxes through themorning dew（晨露）in their bare feet.

We planned our weddings with the help of Barbie dolls and the tiny purple wild flowers growing in our side yard. We became scientists and testedconcoctions（调和，混合）of milk, orange juice, andmouthwash（漱口水）. We ate handfuls ofbittersweet（苦乐参半的）chocolate chips and lickedpeanut butter（花生酱）off spoons. When we ran out of sweets to eat, we snitched sugary Flintstones vitamins out of the medicine cabinet. We became masters of the Kraftmacaroni（通心面条）and cheese lunch, and we dutifully called our mother at work three times a day to give her updates on our adventures. But don't call too often or speak too loudly or whine too much, we told ourselves, or else they'll get annoyed and she'll get fired and the summers will end.

We shaped our days the way we chose, far from theprying（爱打听的，窥探的）eyes of adults. We found our dad's Playboys and charged the neighborhood boys money to look at them. We madecrank（易怒的）calls around the county, telling people they had won a new car. "What kind?" they'd ask. "Red," we'd always say. We put on our mom's oldprom（舞会）dresses, complete with gloves and hats, and sang backup to the C.W. McCall song convoy, " which we'd found on our dad's turntable.

We went on hikes into the woods behind our house, crawling under barbed wire fences and through tangled undergrowth. Heat andhumidity（湿度，湿气）found their way throught he leaves to our flushed faces. We waded in streams that we were always surprised to come across. We walked past cars and auto parts that had beenabandoned（抛弃）in the woods, far from any road. We'd reach the tree line and come out unexpectedly into a cowpasture（牧场，牧草）. We'd perch on the gate or stretch out on the large flatlimes（边界，界限）tone outcrop that marked the end of the Woods Behind Our House.

One day a thunderstorm blew up along the Tennessee River. It was one of those storms that make the day go dark and the humidity disappear. First it was still and quiet. There was electricity in the air and then the sharpcrispness（易碎，酥脆）of a summer day being blown wide open as the winds rushed in. We threw open all the doors and windows. We found the classical radio station from two towns away and turned up the bass andcranked up（把声音调大，启动）the speakers. We let the wind blow in andchurn（搅动，搅拌）our summer day around. We let the music we were onlyvaguely（暧昧地，含糊地）familiar withroar（吼叫，咆哮）through the house. And wetwirled（转动，旋转）. We twirled in the living room in the wind and in the music. We twirled and we imagined that we were poets and dancers and scientists and spring brides.

We twirled and imagined that if we could let everything --- the thunder, the storm, the wind , the world --- into that house in the banks of the Tennessee River, we could live in our summer dreams forever. When we were girls.