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We lived on the banks of the Tennessee River, and we owned the summers when we were girls. We ran wild throughhumid（潮湿的，湿润的）summer days that never ended but only melted one into the other. We floated down rivers of weekdays with no school, no rules , no parents, and noconstructs（构图，建筑物）other than our fantasies. We were good girls, my sister and I. We had nothing to rebel against. This was just life as we knew it, and we knew the summers to be long and to be ours. The road that ran past our house was a one-lane rural route. Every morning, after our parents had gone to work, I'd wait for the mail lady topull up to（追上）our box. Some days I would put enough change for a few stamps into amason jar（玻璃瓶）lid and leave it in the mailbox. I hated bothering mail lady with thistransaction（交易，办理）, which made her job take longer. But I liked that she knew that someone in our house sent letters into the outside world. I liked walking to the mailbox in my bare feet and leaving footprints on thedewy（带露水的）grass. I imagined that feeling the wetness on the bottom of my feet made me a poet. I had never read poetry, outside of some Emily Dickinson. But I imagined that people who knew of such things would walk to their mailboxes through themorning dew（晨露）in their bare feet. We planned our weddings with the help of Barbie dolls and the tiny purple wild flowers growing in our side yard. We became scientists and testedconcoctions（调和，混合）of milk, orange juice, andmouthwash（漱口水）. We ate handfuls ofbittersweet（苦乐参半的）chocolate chips and lickedpeanut butter（花生酱）off spoons. When we ran out of sweets to eat, we snitched sugary Flintstones vitamins out of the medicine cabinet. We became masters of the Kraftmacaroni（通心面条）and cheese lunch, and we dutifully called our mother at work three times a day to give her updates on our adventures. But don't call too often or speak too loudly or whine too much, we told ourselves, or else they'll get annoyed and she'll get fired and the summers will end. | 
