Oh to be there.
Late August and the grapes almost popping off the vines. A glass from last year and the hammock to swing in on the terrace behind the house that looks out towards the sea if one could only see that far.
A long week to get everything organized before the picking starts. Huge lunches and dinners to organize for cousins that insist on appearing.
Funny. Wanting the city life and all in San Francisco or Berkeley. Liking the hills to drive up and down, it must be. All five arrested at least once for going up and down too fast. Trouble, too. Too small to say no. Stuffed in the back seat bouncing off the seat and a new dressed getting mussed.
Mother not thrilled. I Magnin, it had been. Shopping trip once a year and the most expensive thing. Must be why they did it. Liked Father better anyway. Something about Mother being too fussy about life. Not liking dirt, it was true, and not a standard vineyard owning lady. But fun she was, and lots of it.
But a fashion magazine to look through. Stolen from the dentist, it was true. Not nice but loving the model’s outfit on the cover and the store down the road not carrying the thing.
A card falling out. Impossible to know who but a memory just the same. Mother’s old classmate and her husband with the big house in Berkeley. Hydrangea all the way to the porch roof and a housewarming party.
Even children allowed to come . . . cocktails in the back yard but a clown and cake and a drying yard filled with one of those maypole looking things with streamers hooked onto the clothesline and a prize at the end. . . a picture after in the front yard with a blue hair ribbon that went with the sash . . . priceless . . . house gone in an earthquake later but not that day . . . .no, that day was perfect.
