The Pyramid of Summers

Margaret stood before the attic window, cable-knit cardigan wrapped tight against morning chill, watching dew glisten on the abandoned swimming pool below. Her grandson Danny would arrive tomorrow—first time since Arthur passed—and she'd been gathering memories like stones.

She lifted the faded **baseball** from the cedar chest. 1956, the year Arthur hit his first home run. "Heard that crack all the way from the kitchen," she'd written in her diary then. Now, touching the scuffed leather, she still heard it—the sound that started their sixty-year innings.

The television flickered to life, **cable** news humming softly. She preferred her stories, but Arthur had insisted. "Can't disconnect from the world, Marge. We're still in it." He'd been right. Even now, watching alone, she felt connected—to something larger, to the endless human story unfolding.

Downstairs, she opened the recipe box, revealing her family's **pyramid** of bread recipes. Arthur's mother's sourdough starter, bubbling through the Depression. Her mother's rye, surviving wartime rationing. Her own focaccia, taught to her by Arthur's Italian grandmother. Six generations in a glass jar. "Sustenance stacks," Arthur called it, laughing at her careful organization. Now it stood as legacy—more precious than any pyramid in Egypt.

Danny would want to learn the focaccia. She'd teach him, just as Arthur had taught him to hold a bat. "Hands together, like you're praying," he'd said. Words that echoed now.

The **pool** out back—Arthur's pride—had been silent since his stroke. But she'd filled it this morning. Danny would splash, and she'd watch from the porch, knitting another cable, measuring time by the lap. Some legacies dissolve in water; others float.

Tomorrow, she'd hand Danny the baseball, start the starter, watch him swim. The pyramid would grow taller. And somewhere, Arthur would be smiling, adding another story to the stack.