Bring the noodle salad to the Tuesday T-ball picnic. And if you forgot the key ingredient at the grocery store and realized it too late so that you couldn’t make the noodle salad after all, cut up the half watermelon in the fridge and add grapes and bring that instead. And when the mom arrives with the cut-up watermelon with grapes to sit alongside the four other bowls and plates of cut up watermelon, say, “That’s ok! Kids love fruit, it will all get eaten.”

Send your ten-year-old over to hold the toddler’s hand and walk her around at the 4^th of July Rodeo.

Stand behind the horse trailer or boat trailer and help line it up.

Have popsicles ready in the freezer in case the neighbor kids show up.

Go to the branding and do the ear tags or take the pictures or watch the babies or run for supplies.

Gas up the lawnmower, fill up the tires, change the oil but leave the mowing to her.

Bring the extra cucumbers to the nursing home and the extra eggs to your sister and leave the extra zucchini in the front seat of any unlocked car.  

Make a rhubarb cake for church breakfast.

Leave room for a your friend’s lawn chair next to yours at the ballgame and tell her you like her new haircut, then when she tells you the kids are going to bed too late and her house is a mess  and they’re behind on their 4-H projects, nod your head and say “same, same, same,” and then tell her the story about your daughters’ goat who keeps getting out and eating your petunias.

Take the kids to clean the ditches.

Make him an egg salad sandwich with a little baggie of chips and a full-sized Snickers bar and an orange already peeled with a jug of ice water and bring it to the field. Pack yourself the same lunch and eat with him in the shade.

Sit in your lawn chair in the garage with the door open at the end of the day and watch the cars drive slowly home and the kids play in the lawn and offer a beer or a pop to the neighbor who says hello. Have an extra chair there in case.

Take them out for ice cream and say yes to an extra scoop.

Ask, “Did you put on sunscreen?”  “Do you need a Band-Aid?” Bring the bug spray.  

Help them move the old fridge out to the garage and the new fridge into the kitchen. Stay for pizza after.

Clip his long hair short at 10 pm in the kitchen. Make sure the peach bath towel stays draped around his shoulders. Tell him he’s handsome.

Run her a cool bath.

Buy Dr. Pepper for the fridge and orange pushup pops for eating on the front stoop.

Take a 4 pm nap with the fan blowing.

Ride along for a parts-run to town, bring sunflower seeds and roll the windows down.

Help them make a lemonade stand and drive them to the highway to set it up and when they run out, drive home to make more.

Leave the shades to your bedroom open and the let the sunrise wake you up.
Bring them to the pool and go all the way in, over your head even. Fix their goggles a thousand times.

Be the parade-float supervisor.
Plan vacation bible school for your little church and invite the new family in town.

Water your neighbor’s tomato plants and geraniums while they take the kids on a waterpark vacation. Feed her cat too. Say “I’d love to,” when she calls because you mean it. You’d love to. Have fun, it’s summer. I love you.