Summer meant grandma’s 80’s brown conversion van.
Brown carpet, brown velvet curtains, semi-sheer accordion blinds and dimpled beige leather seats and a third row, pulled at the rusts into a bed. A speaker system more elaborate than the dash and a giant bread cupboard that actually stored a mini box TV.
The van that came with a VHS tape of The Mask. And grandma, she said it wasn’t too old and
it was a deal, and, yes, I had to agree. Getting this van and
The Mask?
It was my job to buckle my sister in and out of the seatbelt and I would help look for yard or garage sale signs and which way the arrows pointed, but the police scanner crackled when we were out of our seat and grandma usually insisted we drive the 30 miles to Findlay because the gas was a dime cheaper.
But the van took us wherever we needed to go.
Summer was bloated, popsicle-stained bellies glistening in disposable camera flashes and SPF—not 30, not 50, not 75—100 and “beach day” at the pond with sunhats and beach umbrellas and beach bags and beach coolers closer than the 150 feet to grandma watching on the front porch.
Grandpa would work at the factory all day and sometimes I’d wake up at 5am with him and
stand in front of the sink and look out at the birds and the dew and the countryside of Ohio that told him he’d never have it, but here he was, and I remind him that my first taste of coffee was at their kitchen table, always half populated with mail, garage sale figurines, votives, candles, produce, place mats, grandpa’s change, and laminated prayers or cooking instructions.
The morning ritual: dipping buttered saltine crackers in mugs of black Folger’s coffee.
The summer of leaning over the garage fridge and looking for Bug Juice, Gatorade, or caffeine-free Diet Pepsi and swimming in the pond in regular clothes more than suits because we’d wade deeper and deeper until one of us splashed into commitment and grandpa swimming with us even though he didn’t really know how to and waiting for grandma to do her hair and make-up before Tuesday mass or Tony’s fried fixings and listening for grandpa’s snoring on the white pleather couches after he’d said he’d watch PBS and drinking Root Beer with crushed ice in Coca-Cola glasses from McDonald’s and eating shredded chicken sandwiches, even if they’re like mush, sloppy joes, spaghetti, beans and franks, or, best of all, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken with sides of mashed potatoes and gravy and mac and
cheese and wearing grandpa’s tractor, fishing, veteran, or Ford T-shirts as night gowns to bed and sleeping on the pull-out sofa walled in by windows that peek out to the ravine with willows and shadows and who knows what. Hearing the dogs bark half-a-mile up the driveway and
do you know who’s coming, Rick?
Sometimes the van would take us on stories of family’s past and to the graveyards but all I could think about was—
I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the van looking down at my pale thighs and I tell my grandma I’m fat. Instead of saying we should go on a diet she says I’ve got strong legs, so we go get ice cream and I’m sunburnt so we go get aloe lotion and I don’t want to color in the little kids’ coloring books so we draw clothes on cats and bears and giraffes and elephants and
I’m obsessed with mermaids so we get any mermaid paraphernalia we find at Dollar Tree and Dollar General and Family Dollar and grandma buys every mermaid VHS tape in garage sale existence.
—I looked for it in my mom, my dad. I don’t know why. It was grandma and grandpa and Mr. Twister and Rancho Fiesta and gas station ice cream a foot tall and garage sailing with coin purses and bedazzling hair and wearing grandpa’s jean shorts after bleeding through my pair of pants and feeding all the pond catfish dog food and trying on old prom dresses and baking pond clay ceramics in the sun.
On summer evenings behind the summer’s cumulonimbus clouds my grandpa and I would take out the old broomstick and, one by one, we’d teleport the dragonflies down from the spider’s webs and onto the sidewalk in front of the porch and I’d peel the webs from their wings so they could fly away or I’d take them down and let them rest so they weren’t hanging up like ghosts.
There were already so many of them.
Summer meant watching the dragonflies fly away and,
I checked, they do fly all the way away.
Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash
Ericka Russell
Ericka Russell is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. After obtaining her BA at Ohio University, she received her MFA from Western Kentucky University. Ericka now pursues college instruction, photography, and outdooring.
