You Know Where to Find Me by Rachel Cohn

Author:Rachel Cohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2008-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Honeysuckle Sweet

ONCE UPON A TIME, TWO SISTER-COUSINS IN A TREE HOUSE played a game called Good Housekeeping.

When they were thirteen-going-on-fourteen, in a soot-covered, untended bookshelf at their favorite old neighborhood bookstore, they had discovered what would become their reading Bible that summer: The Good Housekeeping Cook Book, 1942 edition. The D.C. summer days were so hot that the cobblestone pavement in their garden appeared to roll, the air felt still, the trees wilted in exhaustion. At twilight, when the temperature became bearable, the two girls took refuge away from the castle’s air conditioning to slip inside their shaded fortress tree house, where they read aloud passages from their new archeological discovery.

AFTERNOON TEA FOR A FEW: Half an hour to get it, and clear it away, if you’re busy. An hour or longer, if you’re having a few friends in. But the very act of appearing serene, makes you feel that way. And the hot tea with a dainty accompaniment or two, helps to turn your mind to happy repose.

They drank iced tea with fresh mint from the garden and imagined what a “happy repose” could possibly be. They had discovered cigarettes but not yet the fresh herbs and other bloodstream enhancements that could truly make them feel serene. One of them had kissed a boy already. One of them would wait much, much longer, possibly forever.

They knew they would grow old together, best friends always—but more, because they were blood. They acted out Good Housekeeping future sister-lives that included lavish weddings, palatial homes, beautiful children, and always—always—a properly-set table, using the good linens, real dinner napkins, a floral centerpiece, candles, and the silver grudgingly passed down from a domineering mother-in-law.

A formal dinner party calls for damask in either linen or a very fine rayon, with a table pad beneath it for protection, or an allover lace or embroidered cloth laid on the bare table. In laying such cloths have the center fold running down the exact center of the table. The cloth should overhang about 8”-10”.

They kept a ruler in the tree house, and discussed anatomical parts that could be wedged within that 8”-10” overhang. By the end of their Good Housekeeping summer, one of them had touched, through a pair of jeans, an upper thigh near to the very anatomy that hung between the legs of a boy at summer camp. The other had not, but she could rely on books and/or her better half for anecdotal evidence.

OVERWEIGHT AT THE TEEN AGE: In many families there is a boy or girl who is definitely overweight. It is true that some extra pounds through adolescence are not harmful and they are often lost naturally as the child matures. But to be excessively overweight presents a real problem both to the child and the parents. There is often ridicule from companions which causes hurt feelings and a withdrawal from companions, resulting in a hesitancy about entering into active sports, so that the child does not get the proper exercise as well as the desirable association with other children.

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