She took the king size sheets she had impulsively bought, but never used, and recklessly ran a curtain rod through the tops. The long fall of pristine white cotton cloaked her five foot windows, pooling on the hardwood floor. Letting the light in, keeping the glare and stares out. She smiled at the affect, pleased with the soothing warm rectangles on the honey colored wood. A frisky August wind kept the curtains dancing. On impulse she stepped inside their tent-like embrace, looking out the window into the baking summer streets.

She closed her eyes, felt the cotton brush her skin, drawing her around, so that it fell against her face like a veil. It felt cool and fresh, smelling faintly of soap.

On impulse, she suddenly ran forward into the still empty room, feeling the rush of fabric over her face, smelling dying summer clinging to the sheets, until she was free from them, letting them drift lazily back to the floor behind her.

The sensation brought back a clear memory. It wasn't a high priority memory. She hadn't thought of it in years. But it was still there in pristine sensory detail. She had followed her mother into the backyard with a bucket of wooden clothes pins. Her Mom had set down her basket of damp clothes with a sigh, and begun hanging them, while she had run around the four massive oaks with clothes lines intersecting between them, placing her feet carefully to avoid the sharp edges of acorns that lay thick under the creeping-charlie and dandelions. As the sheets were hung, the backyard slowly became a maze of damp cotton smelling of soap and summer, snapping in the breeze, making the lines bob crazily. She had run through them then too, run as fast as she could to feel the cool damp cloth rush past her upturned face. Through one line of sheets, and then another, around and around, until she was dizzy, and the sheets were all hung, and it was time to go inside.

The memory had her smiling. How small she must have been, to have run under lines that now barely came to her chest. How easily entertained, happy only with sheets and wind to play with.

And here she was again. Much taller. Much older. Much harder to entertain. Or so she would have sworn not long ago. But as she stood barefoot on the glossy wood watching the sheets with a foolish smile on her face, she wondered.