Friday, June 10, 2011

Summer Once Again~ Stories of Summer

How is it that the time fleets past so swiftly~
It was just spring as we planned and traveled to Tennessee to enjoy it's beauty and visit my son and his wife as he graduated from L.M.U. with his Master's Degree.
While there I connected with newly made friends from past visits and enjoyed their company.
I was able to visit with a new friend who coached me in using the 'manual' button instead of my auto on my camera and was greatly inspired by her talent.
My other new friend and I have being "Navy brats" in common, and both lived in Hawaii, as well as share the love of quilting. It is always so much fun to get together with these inspiring women and rub elbows.

I have recently started reading a Ray Bradbury book, Dandelion Wine, for a summer Book Club. The book is set in 1928 and in a mid-west town during summer.~

I have been remembering summer's past in my life, spent around the United States...
First, early years in California, running barefoot through the day on the sidewalks, walking to the five-and-dime for trinkets. Sitting on the curb, waiting for the tinkle of the ice cream trucks song, calling for us to come running for something cold and its tasty sweetness.

Then mid years in Connecticut, Playing kick-the-can through dusk, in the cul-de-sac, walking down the back dirt path to Mohegan Park to watch the fishermen tossing their lines into the pond. The first taste of pistachio ice cream and rainbow sherbet on ice cream runs with my mom. Art classes at N.F.A., the smell of the old wood floored buildings and their creaking as young students walked the halls. Playing out in the woods beyond the yard, looking for Indian artifacts, taking picnic lunches on long day hikes going out alone, looking for crystal outcroppings, but never finding any. Making fantasy towns in the back lot, using imaginations, and cannot forget playing with Barbie and the endless hours of setting up house and dressing her. The simpleness of youth and a life full of adventure and outlook far beyond the horizon.
Older summer's in Virginia as a teen, walking to the drug store for a cherry-coke at the soda fountain, Smelling for the first time Yardley's English Lavender and and English Leather, spending the day cutting paper dolls and drawing and making my own. Writing stories, visiting friends in Rhode Island, learning to make potato salad for the 4th of July....
How many memories of our past do we keep locked inside and forgotten about. The way the air smelled of new mown lawn, a street being resealed with asphalt, or the smell of tar on a roof? Have we shared any of these memories with our children who are quickly growing towards mid-age?

Yesterday, I tried to relay a story to my 4 1/2 year old granddaughter," When Grammie was a little girl , just like you, her daddy and mommy took her and her sisters,to the drive-in -movie. That is a movie that you go to and sit in your car outside and watch the movie on a big screen.
That movie was 'The Wizard of Oz'. When we got tired, we would crawl up in the back window to go to sleep. The others would sleep across the back seat and on the floor with the hump in the middle, then daddy would pick us up and carry us into bed. Ahhh... those were the days!

Can any of the kids fathom that we were once 'little'. I try to share pictures of when their mommy was little and their age, and pictures of me... but I'm not too sure that they can get the concept.~

In another chapter of my summer book, an elderly lady, Mrs. Bently deals with issues of relating to the youngsters in her neighborhood, as they run through the weeks of summer, as if each hour has a year to spend, and also dealing with her 'collections' of memories in her life. The gathering of memorabilia has kept her days ordered throughout her life, and now all she has is piles of junk stacked throughout her home.~
I am feeling that my life is parallelling this as I have a looming abyss that drowns me each time I enter. One day I straighten and then the next it is back in a mess once again.

My father's home has become a collection of memories~ So many interesting collections, yet there are no stories to tell about them, or where these collections came from and who they belonged to...

I long to hear the stories, and now that the storytellers no longer remember.

2 comments:

Anita said...

Thank you for sharing your memories. I LOVE reading childhood stories. Here is a memory of mine.. When I was in the 1st and 2nd grade we lived on an island in the middle of Pearl Harbor called Ford Island. I remember everyday taking a boat/Navy launch to school. The launch had a canvas cover, but the sides were open and when it was raining we all had to huddle in the middle. It was great fun. :) It wasn't until we moved to Florida that I realized not everyone took a boat to school.

Vista Gal said...

What a wonderful memory! Thanks for sharing Anita!