Summer All Year Long

Harvest the wine, summer fruit and olive oil, and put them in your storage jars.

—Jeremiah 40:10

When I was growing up, Sunday afternoons were family time—private, casual, silly. After church, my dad was tired but happy, loose, easygoing. My brother and I got to watch the Bears game while we did our homework in the study instead of doing it at the kitchen table like we usually did. My mom made sushi for lunch, and for dinner, blueberry crisp.

My mom baked her blueberry crisp in a round, blue earthenware baking dish, deep enough for there to be several inches of warm, bursting berries under the sweetness of the crisp topping. The dish had a fitted lid and handles on each side, and she would bring it down to the study with potholders and with the lid on, so that even if we had seconds, it was still warm.

She topped each bowl of crisp with a scoop of Breyers vanilla bean ice cream, flecked with dark specks of vanilla, and the ice cream melted into the crisp layer and the hot berries in thick, creamy rivers. It was a treat to taste the summer flavors of the lake back at home in the suburbs during the winter.