a few nights ago, i awoke in the middle of the night with a feeling of elation, an awakening on several levels. i recalled many happy times in my childhood. i remembered baseball games we attended as a family, watching the farm league team in a nearby large city and gorging on hot dogs and soda. i remembered hopping on my bike in the summer and riding for hours on ends with my friends, the warm sun turning my skin a golden brown. i remembered building cities and roads in the dirt under the giant sweet gum tree in the yard of my friend down the street or in the kitchen play yard behind our house. i remembered spending weeks in the summer with my maternal and paternal grandparents.
i remembered walking with my cousin from my mother's parents' home to the movie theaters downtown and looking at the toy departments in the five-and-dime stores after the movie, then riding the bus back to near their home/grocery store and walking the two blocks from the bus stop to their store. i remembered how fascinated i was with their store and its customers and the delicious food my grandmother made in her kitchen, while my grandfather tended the store a few steps away. i remembered how amazed i was that she could so quickly prepare her wonderful meals in just a few minutes' time so that she could return and help wait on customers in the store. i remembered walking from their store to the public library several blocks down the street and spending hours there reading among the two floors of books.
i remembered the contrast with my father's parents' home, which was always quiet, as my grandfather spent the day in his sunroom at one end of the house while my grandmother tended to household chores at the other end, seeing them together only at meal times. there i spent my time reading, watching television, or talking to my grandmother as she worked, with occasional trips with her to the stores in her town's small shopping district or to visit her friends around town. the pace of life at their home was much slower than at my mother's parents'. there were no nearby relatives to come and visit, no cousins to play with, but i loved being there just the same.
i remembered going to stay at my father's sister's home for a few days during the summer. her husband was well off, and they had a beautiful home. her two children, my first cousins, were somewhat snobby and looked down on their "country cousin," but i didn't care. i loved my aunt, and she doted on me when i came to stay. she was a smoker, and i loved the smell of her cigarette smoke that permeated the house. of all my relatives, their house was the only one with central air conditioning, a rarity in those days, and the smell of that smoke after it was filtered through the central cooling system was unique and wonderful to me. when i think of my aunt, it's that smell and her reddish brown hair that i remember.
my list could go on and on. those memories came back as never before. before when i recalled my childhood, the thing i most remembered was my father's distance from me and my jealousy of the affection he held for my younger brother. on this night, though, i was filled with a deep gratitude to my father. i realized that he had made many sacrifices for me and for his family and that, because of his upbringing, he had no model of a close, affectionate father, since his own was distant and work-absorbed. somehow the recollections of a happy, privileged childhood and the sense of love and gratefulness for my father stirred a deep joy in me that was not there before. i don't regret the lost sleep that those vivid memories caused. rather, i hope never to lose that sense of waking up to long-suppressed and seemingly forgotten days of a wonderful childhood.
may we all awaken to whatever joys the past may have held. may we be grateful for happy, carefree days during this season of thanksgiving and carry that sense of gratitude through the rest of our lives. may we forgive the hurts of the past and seek to understand those who caused them. may we see that the good outweighs the bad in most instances, and may a deep, abiding happiness be ours. shalom.
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