summer’s here

The first Memorial Day party we ever had was in 2008, when we were still living with the boys; I got back from New York and it was already happening, Q in the living room in his flip-flops, a water balloon in either hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked, slinging an arm around my shoulders. This was a day and a half after my parents announced they were splitting up, divorcing after twenty-five years together; I’d gone home to drink iced coffee in the yard in the suburbs, found a crater where my house used to be.

“Sure,” I lied, dropping my overnight bag and smiling. I took the water balloon he offered, hucked it out the window into the street.

*

Seven years later: we had five babies in the backyard on Saturday, climbing up and down the deck stairs, making funny faces, wearing baby hats while the rest of us ate potato salad and drank summer ale, our feet up on lawn chairs and the music probably loud enough to make our new neighbors wince. I didn’t know what the bushes were in my yard so P texted his mom pictures of them and ten seconds later we had our answer, hydrangeas, and instructions for how to keep them alive. “You’re here!” I kept saying all weekend, every time the bell rang, someone I loved on the other side of it. “It’s you, oh! You’re here!”

*

One year we made up a cocktail called the Cotuggie Noogie and made everybody drink it. One year we had a contest where everybody did the worm. One year the cops came, although to be honest that year is a tiny bit blurry. Two years we didn’t have a party at all.

*

The girls got a chocolate cake for my birthday. I told them all they didn’t need to sing. I closed my eyes and I blew out the candles. I wished it could always be like this.

We’re okay, or if we aren’t then we will be. We are all of us always okay.