Looking back

Where has it gone?

The time, I mean.

Daughter is a woman in her mid-twenties.

And I am, um, not.

We were careful.

We wanted a baby for five years.

We knew what a gift from God she was (and is).

We recorded, photographed, shared practically every moment of her childhood.

Carefully.

Videos, yes indeed. Journaling, yes indeed.

Cherishing every moment, trying not to miss one inch of change and growth.

But it disappeared anyway.

Poof.

Where did it go?

Another Goodbye

The older I get, the more goodbyes there seem to be. 

My elders, folks that still make me a child (okay, in my mind only), are slipping away.

The other day, someone who had been very close to me all through my childhood passed away. I knew she'd been quite ill for some months, diagnosed, I believe, with kidney cancer. She declined treatment from the very beginning, being as she was 94 when diagnosed and felt it foolish to make herself sick and suffer from a treatment that in no way would enhance her life and certainly not prolong it. 

Eventually, of course, she began the decline and died last week at the age of 96. 

She was a huge part of my childhood. She camped with us a lot, hunting and fishing with the best of them. She was a real outdoors person, and after she retired stayed in blue jeans and shirts unless it was Sunday.

She was the school truant officer back in the day. Today, to be more politically correct, I guess, they are called social workers. Think about it: you are laying outta school; you get caught. Who are you most concerned about visiting you, a truant officer or a social worker?  Pffffft.

Anyway, when I was very small she would buy me things if she saw I liked them. I still have a small plastic elf that sits on my mantel every Christmas and a five inch, cast iron, pot bellied stove she found for me after searching everywhere, because I'd fallen in love with the one she had at her house. 

She had funny stories about stuff I said, just like my parents did.

I called her "Meanie" and she called me "Meanie". The reason is now lost to time. 

When I quit school in the third grade (look it up, I blogged about it a long time ago), she was the truant officer and had to visit our home. 

I wasn't nervous, she visited our home a lot. It was a little strange because she was in her school clothes; a skirt, blouse, hose and loafers, instead of her weekend clothes, blue jeans. Plus, Mother and Daddy left the room for her to talk to me alone.

I have  no memory of what was said, or what she did. But I bet she felt just as helpless as all  the other adults I was driving crazy over this.

No one should be shocked when a 96 year old person dies.

Yet, I was, sorta. I mean, if someone has been around all your life and you are 61 years old, shouldn't they stay around the rest of the time? I know the logical answer.

I've felt rather sad for a few days.

I  haven't really seen her much in years - only if I ran into her somewhere - and not at all in the past two or three.

But I knew she was there.

And now, she's not.

For You

This blog is for you.

A few days ago I took my 85 year old mother to visit her 81 year old first cousin.

He was born on her fourth birthday. They were close as children, maybe because of that, and also Mother is an only child, so she was exceptionally close to her cousins.

They reminisced a bit about their childhood.

One of their memories was walking away from their grandparent's house (and his parent's home nearby), down a dirt road to fetch the mail. They had to cross a foot log over a creek to get to the mailbox, as that was as close as the post office would deliver at that time.

Mother was (and is) afraid of water, so she refused to walk the foot log and made her cousin do it. Since he was (and is) four years younger, I'm sure he was easily bossed.

He also talked about hearing Mother and her parents arriving way up the road. My grandfather always had a fairly new car, and they could hear it coming, and then he'd be blowing the horn. He always brought them candy or chewing gum. This was a special treat, as they lived way out in the country and gum nor candy was easy to come by.

Life was certainly different in many ways back in the 1930's, just as it was different in the 1960's, when I was very small. And like it was in the 1990's when Daughter was very small.

Time changes things all the time. Always has, always will.

But there are also some things that never change. Like 8 year olds bossing 4 year olds.

So, take a moment and go back to your own childhood and think about a simple, ordinary moment of your own, and cherish it. Because it belongs to no one but you and you must keep it fresh or it will be gone forever.

This blog is for you.

Incidents of Childhood

I probably have more memories of Daughter's childhood than she does.

She remembered the blizzard for years, even though she wasn't near her third birthday yet. But at around age six, the memory faded.

I noticed a lot of her baby/toddler memory bit the dust as soon as she got all busy with readin and writin and rithmatic. It has something to do with the alpha state going away (except just before sleep).

I thought she might have some remnant memory of the blizzard as we were walking in the middle of it, trying to get to a neighbor's house. It was usually a two minute walk, but took us twenty that time.

She doesn't remember insisting on climbing up a huge slide "all by herself" at around the age of three. She got to the top, looked down and started screaming,  "Somebody help me!" Of course, Husband scurried up the ladder to the rescue.

She kinda remembers being turned loose and allowed to wallow like the piglet she was at heart. It had come a huge rain, the mud puddle was a big un, and she was looking at it longingly. This was when no one lived on our road but us and the road was a dirt trail. I found some clothes she had worn out and out grown and set her free. I hosed her down before she came in the house, and put the clothes in the trash.

She doesn't remember breaking her collar bone, for which I'm grateful. Lord knows I remember that enough for both of us.

I've saved letters to Santa, letters to the Tooth Fairy and even letters to me.

I  have a journal that I've kept a lot of the funny and strange things she said growing up. I'm so glad I did, because a lot of them would be lost to the past if I hadn't written them down.

And of course Husband has taken a gazillion pictures of her - to the point that she knew to pose before she could sit up by herself.

I think for most of us, our childhood memories are a lot of warm, fuzzy pictures in our minds. Not whole memories, but just here and there a snippet.

For me, a lot of my memories are of something either very special - like being waked up and toted to the front door to see the huge snow - or something dark and scary beyond my control.

But I have some that seem insignificant, too.

Wonder what makes the decision in our brains to keep certain memories on file, so to speak, and to put the others way back in the unreachable recesses.

Although, a certain smell, or conversation, or picture can bring something back vividly that we didn't realize was there.

Humans: We are a mystery, aren't we?

I've Looked at Clouds from Both Sides Now/Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

How long has it been since you laid down in the grass, put your hands behind your head, and gazed at the clouds, identifying all the amazing things  you saw there?

Or watched the stars, waiting for a falling one, identifying the constellations?

It's been a long time for me because:

a. I'm afraid a bug would get on me  b. the ground might be damp  c. I couldn't get back up d. all the above

As a child, I would do these things alone or with a friend or two when we were so bored we couldn't think of another thing to do for fun.

"There's an elephant! There's a whale! Do you see the bear?  Oh, come on, it's right there! See?"

And so on.

And looking at the stars at night always fascinated me. Like chips of winking diamonds, they seemed alive and secret.

In 1997, when the Hale-Bopp comet was streaking through the skies, we took Daughter to a darker place than our yard to see it. I guess we did that about three times during it's streak. It interested us more than it did her, but it brought back a lot of star gazing memories for me.

We have, over my adult years, identified cloud shapes, too. Usually from inside a moving car where we might have  stretch of road to see the sky.

In this way you can watch the dinosaur lose shape, either turning into something else entirely or nothing at all.

My childhood was spent outdoors a lot, especially in summer. In fact, the door may have been locked during the day. (I kid, I kid, we never locked our doors.)

Before air conditioning, the coolest place was under or up in a big old tree, the adults sitting on the porch, maybe with the floor fan blowing from the inside of the screen door, if you could find a cord to reach that far.

How long has it been since you climbed a tree?

I don't anymore because: a. there might be a bug on it b. the bark might be damp c. I couldn't get back down (well, even up to start with) or d. all the above

But I can still sit on the porch!

And when we occasionally come home late, I lean against the car, gaze up at the sky, looking at my small patch of sky the trees don't hide...

And I make a nostalgic wish.

Today, take a moment, glance at a cloud, gaze at a star.

Even if you ain't laying on the ground to do it.

Watch It Now, Watch It now! Here It Comes!

Yeah, right.

We have heard the weathermen cry wolf so many times, the next blizzard will catch us by surprise. We'll be out in the yard raking leaves in our bikinis and the bodies will be found come spring, when the 27 inches of snow melt.

Of course, tomorrow, the ice will really come. That's because my husband and I have tickets to the play, "Driving Miss Daisy" up in Blue Ridge. We are celebrating our 28th wedding anniversary come the 28th of January, and thought this a good way to start up the celebration.

I love snow. I'm careful who I say that around, because rank strangers will either leap up and yell, "So do I!" and give you a bear hug. OR a rank stranger will give me the evil eye and  mutter curses under their breath.

I've always been told to never speak to a stranger, and I guess that's why.

My childhood was full of snow. Every winter we had some "good" snows, that being two inches or  more. I didn't have to walk up hill both ways in the snow to school, because they called school off.

I do remember in seventh grade it snowed so much and we missed so much school that we had to go to school on a Saturday. I was horrified. I kept waiting for some level-headed adult to say, "Sadly, we cannot do that. It is against the law."

At least we only had to go till noon that day.

Another winter, I think I was in third or fourth grade, the school superintendent called everybody who lived in town and asked for those children to walk to school the next day so it could count as a school day, as we had missed so much already.

There are downsides to living in a small town.

I went to school that day. It was so cold, those old radiators didn't work too well, so we sat in semi-circles around them with our coats and gloves on. I think the entire attendance of third and fourth grade fit in those two little semi-circles in one room. Mrs. Dover read stories to us all day.

Maybe it is childhood selective memory, but I have lots of them of snow in my childhood winters. Snow cream, snowball fights, snowmen, trying to figure out how you could go up the sidewalk to visit a friend without splattering yourself all over said sidewalk, because it was so slick where people had packed the snow down into a hard, solid surface.

I remember one snowy day our oil heater, which was the only heat in our big old house, stopped up. My Daddy was lying on the living room floor in his undershirt with his arm shoved up the stoves innards. He was covered in soot and his hair stood straight up. He was saying words that should be reserved for barrooms. I was trying not to laugh; valuing my life, and all.

It took days for our house to warm up after the heater started working because it was so cold. And of course, there was no such thing as insulation in the walls.

Beds had so many quilts on them, it was a concentrated effort to turn over during the night. And you didn't much want to, as you'd lose your warm spot if you weren't careful.

But I loved it. If ice comes I hope it brings snow too, not wimpy freezing rain. That's just dangerous and no fun. We'll stay home on our mountain, maybe build a fire in the fireplace. I've got flannel and wool and quilts and four cats.

Insulation, the old fashioned kind.