floppy hat

“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.”
―A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

I love straw hats on sunny days. Whether worn with overalls or pencil skirts, they always fit. Straw hats and lemonade. When I travel, I miss lemonade like we have here in the South, or really America in genera. But I think when it comes down to it, there’s something about the climate mixed with Southern lemonade that make it taste better here than when I drink it in Indiana. Sitting outside (or should I say being stifled) in clothes that can’t be cool or loose enough, gulping down lemonade. Isn’t it funny we always miss what we hate? Half the year I go on and on about how cold it is and how I wish I was back in Southern weather, but as soon as I’m here, I’m dying in the heat, gulping down lemonade. I never remember that discomfort. Later, in my mind when I think of home, I sip my lemonade outside, savoring it unconsciously through conversations. Is it that I never have what I want? Or is it there all along, winking in the sunlight?