"A Month Of Summer "  Excerpts from chapter 1

Rebecca Macklin

            During an anniversary trip to San Diego, I stood on a second-story balcony above a Japanese garden and watched the gardener comb a bed of red gravel and gray stone with a long wooden rake.  Shaded from the rising sun by a wide straw hat, his body arched against the tidal breeze, he patiently drew intricate curves and swirls, which the tourists walked by without noticing.  From their vantage, his work would go largely unappreciated, but he seemed unfettered by this fact.  He kept at his task with a certain determination, a resoluteness-as if he knew each stone, knew where it must go, exactly how it must lie to complete the proper picture.  A leaf blew into the garden, and he danced across the gravel on the light, silent feet of an acrobat, removed the leaf, then repaired the damage with his rake.