Summer Dreams Read Free

Sophocles or was it Socrates, who said the youth are growing worse and worse?" She shrugged. "I think all generations feel the same."
    " Sí , but not all generations have had television and cell phones and video games and IPads and …"
    Natalia laid one hand on her grandmother's arm. "Now don't get started, Pura, you know how it upsets you to talk about---"
    "I know, I know." She shook off Natalia's hand. "But the youth learn their values from those awful electronic gadgets, not their parents, Nieta. All that junk is an abomination, and parents have surrendered their rights."
    Nieta … it was good to her Pura call her by her family nickname. Pura was the one who'd christened her with it when she was barely old enough to toddle or so her mother had told her.
    But Pura's rant on the new millennium's electronics was another thing. All those gadgets were anathema to her. She hated them, refusing to have most of them in her home. Natalia half-agreed, limiting her television viewing to biographies and documentaries and putting her cell phone on vibrate when she was at her grandmother's and texting only in the privacy of her bedroom. No video game had ever graced Pura's humble home, but she did make one concession to the electronic generation: a tablet computer to help her prepare schoolwork for her classes.
    And yet, her grandmother loved the radio, listening to Spanish soaps by the hour. When Natalia had pointed out that the radio was an electronic gadget, Pura had declared that radio was different because you had to use your imagination, like reading.
    Her abuela was also a voracious reader, but she refused to buy a Kindle or Nook, saying that was no way to read a book on some stupid computer screen. Instead, Pura had a storeroom at the back of her house filled, floor-to-ceiling, with books she couldn't part with. Natalia had spent all of her summers grazing through the stacks of books, written in both Spanish and English. Pura was the one who'd educated her about Spanish literature.
    "Teaching can be tiresome, but it's still what I want to do," Natalia said. "There's nothing like seeing the dawn of understanding on a student's face. Though lately, I've been feeling …" She shrugged.
    " Sí, you do reach a few. The ones who are willing," Pura admitted. "It's why I keep going back." At seventy, her grandmother was well past the age to retire. The farm, her radio soaps, and reading should have kept her busy enough.
    Natalia studied Pura from the corner of her eye, and she noticed her hands were a trifle more twisted with arthritis, her back more stooped. Pura had had cataract surgery for the second time during the spring. Her grandmother's advancing age depressed Natalia. She didn't like to think about Pura's mortality. Natalia couldn't imagine a world without her grandmother's passionate opinions and eccentricities.
    As much as Natalia loved her mother, she had always felt closer to her beloved abuela . They shared a special bond, a link which often allowed them to read each other's thoughts. And that special bond was what drew her back to New Mexico each summer. Or was it?
    She wasn't ready to go down that road yet. Instead, she said, "I'm signing up for summer school tomorrow. I only need six more hours to become accredited here."
    "Do you really want to live and teach in New Mexico?"
    "I've been earning hours to do it."
    " Sí , but I never believed you would. I thought of it as a hobby for your summers here."
    Pura herded the squawking, flapping chickens before her, shooing them from the henhouse. She grabbed two buckets of grain, and Natalia followed her to the farmyard. Pura handed one bucket to Natalia, and they both started tossing the grain to the pecking chickens.
    "And how is everyone at home?" Pura asked.
    On the face of it, someone else would have thought Pura had suddenly changed the subject, but Natalia knew better. Her abuela never left a topic of conversation until it had been thoroughly discussed and