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Beyond Summer

By Lisa Wingate

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It’s strange, the things you look past in a normal day--the big picture you don’t see, while you’re busy focusing on all the little things that seem to matter in the moment. Good hair, an outfit that looks just right, a green light ahead when you’re in a hurry to make an appointment, a short line at Starbucks, a straight shot down the fairway in a game of golf, a smile from a cute guy in the parking lot. You rub your life like Aladdin’s lamp, and magic floats out in little clouds. It works time, after time, after time. You never stop to consider that there could be a day when a charmed life isn’t charmed anymore. At that point, the wishes become prayers, and you hope against hope that God will take up where the wishing lamp left off.

The summer I turned eighteen became the summer of unanswered prayers. I was hoping that, since the lease was up on the hand-me-down mini Cooper I’d been driving, there was a new car in the works for my birthday—a combination getting-ready-for-college and welcome-to- adulthood present. And maybe a surprise party—something Hawaiian themed, out on the patio, with floating tiki torches in the pool, grass skirts and coconut bras, and a caterer filling the cabana with fruit baskets carved out of watermelons, perfect for early July. Instead, I got a phone call letting me know that my stepmother had rammed her Escalade into the front doors of the Baby Bundles Upscale Resale Shop while delivering a load of gently-worn or still-had-tags-on-them kiddie clothes. The accident wasn’t her fault. It was the stilettos that did it.

Such things are to be expected from a thirty-four year old woman who takes the kids to play group in high heels, studies future plastic surgery options, and shortens her name to Barbie, because she looks like a life size version of the doll. If the nickname fits, then wear designer shoes with it, was generally Barbie’s theory.

The emergency phone call was from the nanny. She wanted me to know she was off work in fifteen minutes, and if someone didn’t show up at home before then, she’d be leaving los ninos with la tia loca--the crazy aunt.
The crazy aunt, Aunt Lute, was part of the summer of unanswered prayers, which made sense, considering that Aunt Lute claimed not one prayer in her life had ever been answered the way she wanted. She’d pause after she said that, and contemplate the deeper meanings behind foggy eyes that were violet-gray, like an iris bloom drying in the sun. Then she’d punctuate the sentence in one of two ways. Either, the best things in life hide around the blind corners, or, Watch out for small favors, Tamara Lee. The first was an invitation, the second a warning. One ended with a wild laugh, the other with tears pooling in the corners of her eyes and fanning into the wrinkles, like twin rivers flowing into estuaries before being lost in the ocean.

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