What made May’s summer vacation special wasn’t where she went, but how slowly she let it pass. She learned the names of flowers in her neighbor’s garden. She finished the mystery novel and started another. She called a friend she hadn’t spoken to since winter, and they laughed until their stomachs hurt.

Mornings began on the porch swing, watching the neighborhood wake up — the mailman’s whistling, the cat from three doors down stretching on a warm driveway. Afternoons were for the public pool, where she’d dangle her feet in the shallow end and listen to children shriek with the kind of joy that knows no schedule. Evenings brought fireflies and the smell of someone’s barbecue drifting through the humid air.

Her summer vacation unfolded in small, quiet rituals.