Sanibel Scribbles Read Online Free PDF

proud, not wanting to disappoint anyone. They lined up obediently, not a single flower out of line, and their God-given costumes came in all colors, yet not a single alteration, washing, or ironing was ever needed. The red stood with the red and the purple with the purple and the yellow with the yellow, and they did this well. Now they only had to remain standing long enough for their performance, their season. Somehow she knew their sturdy stems would allow them to do so.
    Then, even from a distance, she noticed the one and only stem not wearing its uniform. It stood out like a child on stage for a school performance, the only one not properly dressed and someone else was to blame. Yes, the festival would go on without that flower, just as it would go on without Rebecca this year, without noticing she had died. That’s what festivals did – carried on.
    She stood up and started walking to the bus, ready to say good-bye to more things she loved.
    As the bus slowly passed the campus, Vicki wanted to ask the driver to accelerate. The flowers outside her window streamed endlessly along, rows upon rows, and as the bus moved on their colors blurred into a masterpiece fit for a museum. She braced herself for a bus ride through the Art Coast of Michigan.
    Just south of Holland, the bus headed into Saugatuck, a harbor villagethriving among towering sand dunes, framed by the winding Kalamazoo River. It passed by the public restroom, famous for its walls painted with post-impressionist Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” With this sort of charm, some said the village belonged in a Thomas Kincaid painting, while others called it the Martha’s Vineyard of the Midwest. Vicki called it home. As the bus passed the park overlooking the harbor, Vicki laughed as she spotted a young girl in a red velvet dress standing in the gazebo, answering questions into a microphone. She couldn’t hear the answers. No, she couldn’t remember the answers, her own answers that long ago won her Princess of Saugatuck, a title she had held for one year.
    As the bus made a couple of turns and headed down Butler Street, lined with art galleries, boutiques, restaurants, and bed-and-breakfasts, Vicki stared at the nineteenth-century architecture, realizing the charm of the city would never die.
    The bus stopped, and Vicki knew she only had about twenty minutes, so she got out and ran past everyone who might stop her to talk - past Tweetie sitting on the bench in front of the corner drugstore, and Old Dave rounding the corner with a cane in one hand and the morning paper in the other, and Greg biking down the hill with books in his basket, always ready to talk to anyone who felt like listening. Yes, she knew this place, and she loved its people.
    Vicki rounded the corner of the one-hundred-year-old pink building, once her family’s ice cream shop, and went inside. She knew by heart where all the fifty flavors stood displayed in the glass freezers, and she made sure the new owners hadn’t changed them around. Mint Chip, her older sister Ann’s favorite, belonged next to Chocolate Turtles, her mother’s favorite. Dad, a John Wayne sort of man, liked to have the rugged, nutty, chocolate ones down near the windows. Vicki’s favorites were two from each cooler. She could never decide on one, so she always insisted on scooping a cone with at least five flavors packed together.
    Now, on the customer side of the counter, she knew how to order so as not to aggravate the person scooping. After all, the shop got so busy at times that, if customers didn’t specify plain, sugar, or waffle cone … single or double … French Silk Chocolate … Chocolate Turtles … or plainold chocolate, things got held up.
    She didn’t feel hungry. Food might sicken her. Instead, she craved comfort, and ice cream brought her to a familiar place, a cozy state of mind.
    She caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror that covered the wall behind the counter, and