First Saturday in June

First Saturday in June

BY EILEEN SPINELLI

 

Fifty-nine days to go.
I can’t find my purple beach towel.
I can’t even get to my closet
without walking across
a sea of dirty socks.
Mom pokes her head into my doorway,
says:
“Time to clean your room, Sophie.”
And I have to admit
she’s right.
And it’s not that cleaning my room
is the worst thing to do.
It’s just that there are so many other
better things to do,
like—
painting my toenails Strawberry Pink,
eating a huge stack of Uncle Joe’s pancakes,
dreaming of riding the Ferris wheel,
thinking up a story to tell
around the campfire
on Scary Story Night,
painting shells,
riding waves . . .
all the fun, wonderful,
sandy, sunny things we do
at Summerhouse Time.
Eileen Spinelli, “First Saturday in June” from Summerhouse Time. Text copyright © 2007 by Eileen Spinelli. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: Summerhouse Time (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)