Many years (and pounds) ago I owned a simple, full-skirted cotton dress with summer-colored stripes. Back then, before children, stressful jobs, and general fatigue, I sewed a fair amount and made a white linen jacket to wear with the dress. It seemed the perfect summer outfit, the quintessential warm-weather dress. I wish I had kept it, but had no idea then that it would come to represent summers-gone-by.

Today would have been the first day of this season to wear that dress, with flat white sandals and a white straw "picture hat" as they were called in my grandmother's generation. I did wear a gaudy costume brooch, set with blue stones and faceted crystals that belonged to my great-aunt Blanche. She dyed her hair bright red, wore violently flowered dresses, adorned herself with layers of jewelry and those big picture hats strewn with vines and floral ornaments. She was the postmistress of Washington Crossing, PA for years and had a beautiful old Craftsman house in that tiny town. She would have approved of summery dresses and lemonade spiked with vodka in the shady backyard.