Some wild-haired child in front of my grandparents’ house, 1958.
EVERY YEAR it happens. The school bus stops appearing at the corner at 7 AM and kids are in the neighborhood all day long.
And every year I dream of going back to my Gram’s for a week like I did as a child.
So I reposted the links to posts about that on Twitter. Rereading them was a lot like going back. Maybe even better, for as Wordsworth wrote,
“…nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower…”*
My senior English teacher commented, “We all dream of going back and reliving a particular time, but everyone who’s had that chance knows, it isn’t the same as your memory has preserved it.” She talked to us like grown-ups and so we behaved as such, and thought and spoke as grown-ups within the four walls of her classroom. She had a real gift for teaching, or how else would I have recalled that all these years later?
Now, rereading my own memories, I smile and I do not do what I did as a child, droop sideways on the porch glider, bored, wondering when we’d eat next and what it might be.
Last night at the levee, I caught a whiff of pipe tobacco – briefly, faintly – and this alone was enough to carry me back. I do not wish to be that age again, but I do enjoy remembering.
Write a fond memory today! Maybe share it with someone. 
* * *
*from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
Pat and Mike
Secret Ingredient
