Childhood memories

Looking at my new banner (which IS a photo from our farm....), let's go back in time to our childhood. What I wouldn't give to have another day like this................(trying my hand at writing, bear with me - I ain't got the writing talent like some of you have, but I love summer....)

Close your eyes and imagine.....

The air is warm, sticky & heavy with the sweet cloying smell of honeysuckle. It's hot out, there is an occasional little waft of air stirrin' a piece of hair that keeps ticklin' my cheek and stickin' in the perspiration on the side of my face. I fish it out of the side of my mouth with a finger and taste the salt and then hook the wayward tendril back behind my ear. My grandmother's metal lawn chair is bobbin' back and forth as I rock myself into a trance. It's summertime, and I'm out of school. My bare feet push at the sand again and again and the dirt becomes cooler as my toes scoot deeper into the ground while I rock.

All is quiet 'cept for the rythmic squeak of the chair and the locusts that drone on and on all around me, lappin' over and over each other's beginning and ending so that the sound is one continuous, mesmerizin' hum. Dappled sunlight comin' through the sycamore and catalpa trees makes me squint one eye open to see where to wiggle my chair next to find the best shade. The sour gnats tickle my nose and eyelashes and the crooks of my arms and knees and I wave them away for the thousandth time. Nanny's chickens scratch around lazily in the heat kickin' up a little cloud and her old dog lays flat out asleep in a patch of dirt at my side twitchin' his feet as he dreams of younger days and chasin' squirrels. Dirt daubers whirl around the shed beyond the garden patch lookin' for a safe place to start another little clay cache for their eggs - since I poked their other ones to bits with the end of a mimosa branch that I'd used for a bow and arrow. Even the vegetables in the garden seem to be droopin' in the heat.

The screen door slams, and I look up to find my little sister amblin' towards me with a popsicle in her mouth, a red moustache and another one drippin' down her arm and headin' in my direction. A sweet red popsicle - and nanny didn't even cut them in half this time to save money! I take my popsicle and savor the gooey red sweetness and it runs down my chin, mixes with the granny beads on my neck and drips down the front of my shirt. The sour gnats go crazy. Of course, messy popsicles & granny beads call for a dip in the sprinkler! It'll also get nanny to let us back in the house!

We play all afternoon usin' our big imaginations, never for once thinkin' that our children and grandchildren will be imaginationally challenged because of TV, computers and video games. I wonder, how in the world can they not know how to find somethin' fun to do durin' the summertime? Who wouldn't want to be outside on a day like this? When the sun starts dippin' lower in the sky, Nanny calls us in for supper which might consist of homegrown veggies with bacon grease drippings, cornbread, and maybe fried ham with red-eye gravy or fried chicken and a mason jar of iced tea. She makes me and my little sister do the dishes and stands over us to make sure it's done right. Any trash except cans we take out to the burnin' pile beyond the shed to be burned another day, maybe after a rain.

Nanny peels our dirty clothes off our sun-browned, wet-dog smellin' bodies and plunks us in the bathtub together. There's always a terrible ring in the tub. Donned in fresh undies and a homemade little gown, we crawl into her big 4-poster bed. There is no air conditioner, but the attic fan pulls the balmy night air in through the window over the bed. We can lay there with no covers and be completely comfortable. The curtains are sucked out away from the window and we can look out into the night and see stars and the moon, hear the crickets singin' and shiver at the deliciousness of trying to keep our eyes open to enjoy this feelin'. It doesn't last long as the sandman tugs our eyelids closed and we drift off to sleep..... Does it get any better than this??? I think not!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, summertime!!!!