What better way to celebrate the beginning of summer than by setting up my outdoor furniture on the deck? I unstacked the chairs and arranged them around the table. All I needed was my new blue-and-white-flowered patio umbrella. It’s going to look so pretty, I thought.
I searched the backyard shed. I was sure I’d put it there for safekeeping. I hadn’t even taken it out of the box. I stumbled around for 20 minutes looking for that umbrella. I’ll have to settle for my old one, I thought. It was tattered and faded, but it would give me some shade.
One sunny afternoon I went out on the deck to enjoy it. Something was missing. The wind had blown my old umbrella to the middle of the driveway! The pole was nearby, broken in half. Lying there, it looked like an arrow pointing to the shed, its doors blown wide open. I wondered how I’d missed the windstorm.
I went over to close up my shed. Standing just inside the door, against the shed’s brown wall, was a long brown box—my new umbrella. Maybe I didn’t have it to start out the summer, but I had it just when I needed it.
