When I was a child I’d gauge how good a summer I’d had by the number of scrapes and bruises on my body. Knees scuffed from running on rough, dirt island roads, elbows grazed from falling off rocks and fighting with my brother, and an entire body of scratched and picked to death Mosquito bites. Yesterday, Iole gashed her knee racing down our garden path, and to quell her tears, I talked her through her summertime scrapes, reminding her of what fun she was having just before she got each one. “You can’t race around the laneways, bare foot and bare legged, without risking the odd scuff or two,” I told her. She’ll no doubt show her friends when she goes back to school next week, and with each scrape, will come a story of cycling with her Papa, climbing trees at the local playground, jumping off backs of boats into an ice cold lake and playing hide-and-seek with her pals on the street well past bedtime.
