"We should have a watermelon feed again," Norman says . Looking across the table at me, he's relaxed, knowing he has two days off in a row and then several early shifts. He hasn't shaved yet, and stubble shows under his hand as he rubs his chin.

"We haven't had a good watermelon feed since Ethan died, and it's warm enough", he says. Every summer, when the days are hottest, we have a watermelon feed for the neighborhood kids. You know the days--you wake up sweating, feeling sticky and dirty and needing another shower. The kind of days that dogs scoop a shallow hole in the dirt to lay in, panting, waiting for relief of night Tar bubbles up on the street, and kids sit on the curbs, popping the bubbles with a stick, getting sticky tar smeared on their shoes. As the day warms and the sun beats down, the air you breathe in is hotter than the air you breathe out.

Our last watermelon feed was three weeks before Ethan died. We almost didn't have one that year. I was six months pregnant, and we'd been in our new house for only a month; we were tired, bone tired. Ethan was almost three years old and had no memory of the one the previous year; he'd been a little boy, unable to spit out the seeds; "ewwie" he said, after his first bite, unwilling to take another.

"Okay," I said. Like a slide show, images of that last feed filled my head and heart. Ethan and Evan, then almost 3 and 2, trying with all their little-boy strength to lift huge watermelons almost as big as they. Ethan discovered that they rolled, and showed his little brother the trick of getting them from here to there. Images of little boys, naked on the step, gleefully sinking their teeth into the first watermelon of the year, spitting seeds, the only time it is allowed in our house. Joyful expressions, sweet juice dripping off their chins as they fought over whose seed had gone the farthest, and which seed was the biggest, and who had the biggest of identical pieces. We had learned that, early on.

Images of two little naked bottoms raised in the air, as they poised over our small wading pool, swishing sticky fingers in the cool water and splashing each other.

Other images flash past, fleeting reminders of another time. A time of fear and pain and of knowing in our hearts the outcome of this illness, praying and hoping we are wrong. No more watermelon for Ethan now. He will make no more images of a sweaty sticky boy, laughing and running in the grass, trying so very hard to hit the fence with that last single black seed.

Images of smiles and laughter forever gone; a face I will hold no more, except in the quiet reaches of my heart. How could we do this family ritual again without him? Norman tells Evan and Eliott that it is time for another feed. They look at each other as we explain what it is, and what they can do, and who they may invite.

"Mommy, I remember rolling watermelons with Ethan. It was fun!!" Evan says in the excited way of young boys. An aching warmth spreads through me, at the realization that the images are not mine alone, but shared today, with Ethan's little brother. Perhaps today new images will be made, to replace the ones that hurt so much, that make me want to cry out for what we will never have again.

Perhaps Evan will show Eliott and little Eli how to roll watermelons, and amaze us all with his little boy strength and how far he can spit, while his little brothers look up at him in awe.

"It's time for another watermelon feed," I tell them with a smile, putting my hand in Norman's large one. And it is . . . it's time.

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