We are only here on earth for a short while....even if we live to be one hundred. I do not know any hundred year olds, but I would dare to say that they do not feel like they did when they were fifty, and fifty year olds do not feel as they did when they were twenty-five...and so on. These lives we live....these years we have...what makes them go by so quickly? Wasn't it just yesterday that we were all in elementary schools where the lunchrooms smelled like bologna sandwiches? I wish sometimes I could nail time to the wall and stop it for a little while. I just want to savor all the moments I can...James says our lives are like a vapor. It is so true.
Remember when we could catch fireflies and put them in empty coke bottles or mayonnaise jars? I don't see fireflies anymore. Maybe they left in search of cleaner air. Can you remember the smell of those annoyingly abundant onion flowers? I can't find any around here. Remember attic fans that pulled the air through the house all day and into the night? My brothers and I used to play hide and seek with all the kids in the neighborhood. Does anyone play that anymore? I love that game. We also played kickball in the streets, using whatever we could find for bases....
My dad called us home with a whistle (not a hand held one, but one he had a talent for doing with his mouth alone). He could just whistle this sound that traveled through the air for several streets over. When we heard that whistle, we ran for home, dropping everything we were doing - because we didn't know if that was the first time he whistled or the second or third. My dad could be gruff at times, but it made for good memories, too.
My mom wore aprons. Who does that now? And she ironed everything and used one of those sprinkler thingys on the end of a coke bottle filled with water. (Those coke bottles had many uses, didn't they?) One of my chores was to hang the laundry out to dry. I can still see those clothespins on the line just waiting for shirts, towels, and pillowcases....and those chain linked fences. While hanging up clothes, I could see the neighbors' backyards all the way to the end of the block. We had an old rusty swingset, with half the swings missing and the slide stood a little crooked, but we loved it none the less.
My dad drove an old stationwagon. We would all get in and go to the drive-in movie theatre taking our pillows and blankets and we would fold the seats down in the back and watch the movie, with that beat up metal speaker hanging on the half rolled up window. Ah, the good old days.
I don't know why I am so nostalgic tonight. It is nice, though. Someday, should I live to be one hundred, I might not remember these events ever happening. You be sure to remind me, okay?
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