Three Bird Summer Read Online Free PDF

paddling on both sides. I wasn’t making much better progress, though. Even with my weight more toward the middle, the stern now rose out of the water enough to catch the wind.
    “Maybe I should try this again later,” I said, returning to the dock. “When it’s not so windy.”
    Grandma didn’t reply. She walked back down the dock and picked up a melon-size rock from the shore. I was amazed she was still strong enough to lift a thing like that. Then she made her way back to where I was waiting and squatted down with the rock still in her hands.
    “If it’s really gusting, you can always kneel in the middle of the canoe,” she said. “But this usually does the trick in ordinary wind.”
    She placed the rock in the stern. The weight was enough to bring the end of the canoe down into a normal position.
    “Cool,” I said.
    She looked me up and down and shook her head. “You’re a funny one, Adam,” she said. “All these summers on the lake, and the only thing you’ve ever done by yourself out here is dock-sit. I don’t think you’ve come down even once and fooled around with this stuff on the water.”
    I looked away, feeling the weight of her judgment. Grandmothers were supposed to shower you with praise, not make you feel like a loser.
    I don’t know if Grandma realized that she’d hurt my feelings or if she’d just gotten tired of the day’s lesson. But she stood back up, brushed off her hands, and turned toward the cabin. “I’ll leave you alone to practice,” she said, her captain’s voice gone.
    “OK,” I said. “I’ll be up in a bit.”
    What I wanted to do was drag the canoe onto shore and retreat to the hammock. But I knew Grandma would see me there and be more disappointed than ever, so I stayed on the water. I paddled in tentative circles near the shore where the wind wasn’t as strong. It felt juvenile and absurd — like riding a pony in a ring. But the idea of heading into open water felt even worse.
    I’d been out for about half an hour when I heard voices over in the neighbors’ yard. Shouts. Laughter. It sounded as if Alice and her cousins were back from their camping trip. If they came down to the dock, they would see me and my infantile paddling.
    Quickly, I steered the canoe to shallow water and heaved it onto shore, more grateful than ever for the sheltering trees.

IN THE EVENING, Grandma made me pancakes for supper, just as I had hoped.
    “Don’t expect these every night,” she said.
    “It works for me,” I said.
    “You need protein. Vegetables.” Grandma had been a nurse in her younger years, and she still liked to assert her medical knowledge now and then, even if it was sometimes outdated. When I was a kid, she’d caught me stuffing my face with popcorn while I watched TV. “You can’t eat that much popcorn,” she’d told me then, “or your stomach will explode. I saw it happen once at the hospital. A kid your age.”
    Her words had terrified me so much I hadn’t eaten more than a few kernels at a time for years after. When I was ten, I finally told a friend what she’d said. Just putting it out there in words had been enough for me to realize the ridiculousness of her warning. We’d laughed so hard our stomachs almost did explode. And then we’d gone ahead and eaten two bowls of popcorn and not even felt a cramp.
    When Grandma and I finished dinner, she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat back down. She glanced at the clock. “Your mother should have arrived a while ago. I wonder why she hasn’t called.”
    “She stops a lot,” I said. I’d almost said “to pee” but Mom was right: that really wasn’t something to share with Grandma.
    “That so? I don’t usually see her slow down for anything,” she said crossly.
    I shrugged. “Driving’s different.”
    “When are you going to learn to drive?” she asked me.
    “I can’t even take driver’s ed till I’m fifteen,” I pointed out.
    “You need to know how to drive,” Grandma