Stamp Collecting

My parents were both fifteen, shy, awkward. If he wasn’t playing baseball, and she wasn’t watching him play baseball, he’d visit on a Saturday afternoon. They would sit on her front porch, sipping lemonade, maybe, or coke directly from bottles he brought over from his mother’s depanneur. And they’d work on their collections, swapping stamps, two French for one Australian, dreaming of visiting those places. Did they draw their chairs close? Whisper to each other stuff they didn’t want the adults to hear? And under a light summer rain, pitter-pattering on the porch’s roof, did they lean in to kiss?

Inspired by the image for Six Degrees of Peameal Bacon. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark.