Kool-Aid

I was raised on Kool-Aid and long, listless summer afternoons.  After the household chores, my mother would sit on the porch with other women from the neighborhood - Pauline, Laverne, and Mary.  Their babies down for naps, they would speak in murmurs and soft laughter, sometimes stopping to shout at the children in the street.

Be careful.  Watch out.

The littlest ones ran excitedly through the sprinkler in the middle of the lawn and, when exhausted, would lie flat on the driveway in the sun, sleepily gazing into the sky, imagining fierce animals in the clouds.

I would pull leaves from the weeping willow tree that my father had planted as a little stick, and which had grown to overshadow half of our home.  Caterpillars had made the tree their home, and I would put them on my hands, delighting in their soft black fur creeping along my skin.

One by one, the women would leave - to check on their babies, to start dinners, and wait for the men to come home.  Their doors would close, and the stories they told each other would remain unfinished, incomplete; their separate lives unknown to one another.

My mother would make dinner for us alone, as our father worked late.  His overshadowing of our home would be put off for a few more hours.