August

My favorite month, August, is on the horizon. I've already bought corn, and Jersey tomatoes are starting to be available. I also want to make a crisp of peaches and blueberries. Such abundance! My life is feeling very abundant as well: good friends, rewarding work, new possibilities, many pleasures large and small.

I can never eat corn without remembering what an event it was at home when I was a child: my father would peel the husks and corn silk from the ears he had gotten, freshly picked, from a local farm stand. My mother had the water boiling in the pink enamel former baby bottle sterilizer (true to New England thrift, not much got discarded--I seem to have picked up this habit as well! There is a New England saying: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.") Then a few minutes later our dinner was ready--we just ate corn, nothing else. Preferably slathered with butter and pepper--still my preferred way of eating it. We might have had ice cream later, but I only recall the corn.