An envisioning. 1980, high summer, and four o’clock in the afternoon at the house in Peconic.

Oh to be here.

A fine place to be, even if all your cousins grow carrots after spending their teenage summers being maids to wealthy ladies in gray and white uniforms with caps so starched up they could set sail for New London all by themselves.

Lettuce that needs picking for a salad, but a few minutes more to sit and daydream watching a mother deer help her twins cross the drive so they can go wading in the pond. The best way for sure, with no bathing suits required. Not like the signs up by the beach. All right, it had been, to swim whenever you wanted in cut-offs and a regular old bra back in the old days. More people having come along with their little rules and not anymore. Not even an ordinary bathing suit, but a fancy one with a custom bikini top, so no two girls ever matched. Like the lady with the dress shop, but it being smart to keep track of who wore what to the prom. Bathing suits just getting wet and having a beach dress worn on top.

But still . . . not wanting to look fancy anymore but not always for sure . . . a girl walking by in bright red like Mother loved to wear and a memory in flood . . . grown up dinner parties with the mothers in cocktail dresses . . . the sound of cheering and singing coming up the stairwell getting louder as the cases of high end beer that Father had had delivered were got through while the vodka moved along from being part of a Vodka Collins to being drunk straight from a shot glass while the others yelped . . . loud and all that but all right upstairs . . . not needing a grownup for anything and being able to watch Dad’s color television until the sun comes up or at least until they all go home . . .

Dinner Party. Undated photograph, early-mid 1950s judging by the other photographs in the same set of negatives. Samuel Chamberlain Photograph Negatives Collection, Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. Fair use license. https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:gx41q2814