It only took a trip out in the country to the old home place where I was raised to send me down memory lane once again. Winter was here and there definitely was a chill in the air, but somehow memories of the past brought warmth to me as I remembered so much of my childhood and days gone past. While driving down that narrow country lane, I wondered just how many times I had traveled that same lane and how many times my parents must have made that same trip in another day and another time. They are gone but the memories linger ever so vividly.
I remembered Christmases past and I could almost smell the fragrance of the cedar tree that we went out in the woods and cut that would ultimately become our special Christmas tree that particular year. Mom never let us put the tree up and decorate it until a few days before Christmas, and of course those few days seemed like an eternity to us kids. How I loved those Christmases of yesterday! We had few decorations back then but I remember quite vividly one string of beautifully lit candles of bright colors on our Christmas tree every year; for me it was a sight to behold! Those candles had the appearance of flickering candles….how beautiful they were. We sometimes made rope chains out of several colors of construction paper for the tree, and placed candy canes on the tree. Christmas was simple, as was life in general for us back then, but void of the hustle and bustle of Christmas today.
We kids received one simple gift (always something we wanted) for Christmas and a paper bag filled with an assortment of fruit, nuts and candy. This was all mom and dad could afford but that one gift was worth more to us kids than all the gold in the world. I’m not even sure that if mom and dad had a wealth of money that we would have gotten more gifts because they focused on the true meaning of Christmas. We always read from the Bible about the birth of Jesus every Christmas, always before we opened our gifts.
On that trip down memory lane I thought about how I would like to go back and relive some of my childhood. We were poor but I guess we just never knew it, mostly because we always had enough to eat, clothes to wear, a roof over our heads, and mom and dad making sure we knew we were loved. I recalled how hard times must have been for mom and dad and I remembered them talking about how they had to account for every penny that was spent. We kids had two pair of shoes each, one for Church and one to be worn everywhere else. Can you imagine managing with only one pair of shoes today! Life was simple with lots of hard work and long hours of work, but the most important thing that we had money could not buy, and that was the love of two of the most wonderful parents in the world.
My mom raised a garden in the spring and another one in the fall and she would rasie enough vegetables to last through the winter. It was a lot of work, and as a child not something I relished having to do, but we all worked at it and put our hearts and souls into it. Come Sunday, Mom would put lunch on to cook and off we would all go to church. There was never a question as to whether we would go to church or stay home. Staying home when the church doors were open was definitely not an option with my parents, not even when I would pretend to be sick so I could stay home and watch Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show. My mom and dad were wonderful, loving and God-fearing people and they loved the Lord.
During my trip out in the country, I recalled how we kids used to run through the cornfields and listened to the rustling of the leaves, which would drown out all other sounds. Once I became lost, or so I thought at the time, while playing in those rows of corn, and when I finally took control of my thoughts I realized that if I had just followed the rows of corn I would have found my way out of there without incident. I remembered too, how my dad used to raise watermelons and how he would cut them for us kids to eat out in the field early in the mornings. If you’ve never had that opportunity, then you just haven’t lived! We kids would play out in that hot sand while the big trucks loaded the watermelons to take to market. I remembered how the crows would be flying overhead just waiting for a chance to lay claim to one of those watermelons.
Yes, once again I took a trip down memory lane that I’m sure I’ll not soon forget, and I must admit that it was an adventure well worth my time and one that touched the depths of my very soul! The trip made me thankful for the values that my parents instilled in me, for who I am today, for what I have, for the life I’ve lived and for the opportunity to once again remember just how wonderful life was, for me as a kid, way back when things were simple and seemingly ‘perfect’.