Alfresco Dining

by Barbara Worton

Summer was sitting beside us in the restaurant tonight. Next table. Four kids: three girls, one boy. Family, friends, maybe brother and sisters. One preteen, sweet and quiet, trying to tell the grown-ups what she thought about this and that and the other thing. One budding blonde beauty baby-sitting the other three. Lots of braces and pukka shells and tans and T-shirts and hair so shiny and clean with promise and sun and the joy of not planning for tomorrow, just laughing tonight, flirting with the future from a place of wonderous expectations.

Dad comes over from the grown-ups’ table, strokes the youngest child’s hair. A rhyming game starts, and from another table, a four-year-old chimes in, uninvited, and the summer night grows brighter. We ask for our check, pay and leave for the moon and the beach.