The Perfect Weekend

by emily

Thinking about what to do for my birthday weekend.  I think I have a plan.

Wake up Saturday morning, age 6 or 7, in my childhood bed in Connecticut, early.  Go downstairs, my dad sits me down in the TV room with a bowl of cereal and I watch cartoons until the rest of the family is up.  It’s summer.  I’m in high school.  My friends and I pile into Liz’s Jeep Wrangler and go to the beach.  We eat sandwiches and Pringles and drink Snapple and seltzer from Liz’s dad’s fridge.  We swim, we dry off, we swim again.  My mom and I swim in the waves in Maine.  We get too hot so we all go home.  We’re at a beach house in Rhode Island.  We wait for everyone to shower, drink cheap beer and talk about our plans for the rest of the night the rest of forever.  We get dressed listening to Michael Jackson songs.  We’re in Boston.  We go dancing.  Everyone I know is there.  Billy and I go home and he makes me toast and we go to sleep.

Wake up Sunday morning, it’s fall.  I eat an apple off a tree.  We hike in the woods with the dog.  It’s cold but we’re sweating because we’re running.  We’re in Western Mass, we drive for a long time while leaves fall on the windshield and we sing along with the radio.  We go to the movies and see a romantic comedy and Norah Ephron is still alive.  It’s winter.  It’s snowing.  We walk home in the snow.  I take a bath, put on a sweater, and we have a big family dinner.  Pot roast and vegetables and pie.  We go to bed early, I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the first time until I fall asleep.

Just have to figure out how to bend space and time and I’ll be all set.