It’s early, only 7:30, but my mother and sister are awake and talking quietly in the kitchen. I ask if I may go for a walk around the street. With permission, I tiptoe to the door. Why am I tiptoeing? Everyone at home is awake. My father is already at work, and my brother is away for the summer. So why am I tiptoeing? It feels like the right thing to do today, on this bright early morning.

I open the large white wooden door. It slowly creaks open. The screen door awaits. I reach to open it –– but, oh, then I remember, I forgot my sandals. I tip-toe to the shoe rack and strap on my sky-blue sandals. Now I’m really ready to go. It will not be a long walk, just around our street and the neighboring one.

I open the screen door and close it carefully, so it won’t slam and wake the neighbors. I don’t tiptoe anymore, as I start my little walk, but merely walk quietly, slowly, to best take in the beautiful surroundings and fresh air. It’s a little bit on the cold side, but it’s August, and in a month summer will be over and gone. I’m not ready for summer to end yet. I still want to go to the pool and learn how to do a dive off the diving board. I still want to experiment with our new ice cream machine and learn how to make mint chocolate ice cream that doesn’t taste like toothpaste. There’s still a lot to be done this summer, and I’m glad because of it. But I think that when summer ends, it will end peacefully, yielding to the bright red and gold autumn. I can never decide what color matches summer best. Blue, like the water in the pool? Light brown, like an ice cream cone? What should it be?

I reach the end of our street and turn onto the other street. I see the house that two years ago had been white. A year ago, a tree was blown onto that house’s roof, and the house was damaged. But now, the house looks great! It’s a medium blue. When our neighbors hired someone to repair it, they also decided to have the house expanded. Now that they have two children, they decided to add a few more rooms to the house. All the construction work is done. Their house is beautiful.

I have now reached the end of the street, a dead end, I turn around to go back to our street. All the way back, I daydream, unaware of my surroundings. Suddenly, I snap out of my daydream, and I can’t even remember what I was dreaming about. I realize that I’ve already reached my house. I hesitate before walking inside. I hear my sister, practicing the piano. I smell oatmeal with cinnamon cooking from the kitchen. I decide to go inside. It was a lovely walk, but now my day awaits me. I’m ready to jump into it, refreshed from my morning walk in late summer.