Memories of a Girl

Hold fast your childhood.  Write down your memories. My childhood is all gone now, and even if you are young, yours will be going all too soon. 

I used to walk to school.  When we lived on both Conner St. and Olive Avenue, it was down Olive Avenue, turning at the drug store on the corner, and up past the hospital. The streets were tree lined and led to the road at the bottom of the knobs.  Southern Indiana does not have mountains, but it has knobs.  I would look up Floyd Knobs each morning on my walk.  They were beautiful, covered in trees that climbed up the hill towards God.  It was a long walk for short legs, but I didn’t care.  Little girls wore dresses then, and even in the winter with icy fingers of chill winds attacking bare legs, I loved the knobs. They were a constant, firmly planted to encourage one to breathe free and enjoy the view. 

They are gone now.  They were chopped away to put up gas stations and housing.  I wonder about those who dug into the beautiful and carted it away for commerce and subdivision. Did those who bought the houses think they were also buying the view?  If so, they were disappointed.  The knobs are not pretty, now.  They appear as a rise in the land bitten off by a monster who hated trees.  The memories of a small child wonder that we ate up God given beauty.

I used to visit my Grandfather’s farm.  It was small to others but big to me.  The alfalfa field was life itself.  Grasshoppers popped up as you walked and butterflies tested each bit of clover.  Now, people jump up when a grasshopper lands near then.  But the child walking in grass and clover nearly to her waist just laughed.  There were volunteer strawberries if you knew where to look.  The weeping willow made a tent, its tendrils touching the ground.  There were three apple trees.  Did you know that unless you have two different types of apple tree you do not get apples?  Most varieties need an extra tree, even if it is crabapples, to have the necessary pollen.  The farm was a wonderland of fruit, flowers, fields, animals, and fresh air.  Disney could not begin to compete with my Grandfather’s farm.

It, too, is gone, now.  In 1974, a rash of tornados took away all that I knew.  The storms blew away the barn, uprooted the willow and walnut trees, and smashed the over-one-hundred-year-old house.  Up the road, my great-aunt was in her home.  The storm spun her around and around from room to room.  She lived to tell the story, but her house was too damaged to save. She lost her land.  Before he died, her husband made a contract with a local business.  He could have the home as long as the house remained and he and his wife lived.  After the storm, the house was gone.  They took the land.  My great-aunt had a new home across the road near her son.  Be careful what deals you make. Sometimes, you can literally never go home, again.

I did not have a childhood home beyond my grandparents’ home.  My father was a rolling stone by his own admission.  New houses, new friends, new schools, new everything dotted my childhood.  We could go to school in the morning and find that everything was moved during the day and we were going home to a new house and starting the next day at another school.  We would learn a new route to a new school, try to fit a new curriculum, and mother would start on the house and yard to make it clean and comfortable.  I remember my childhood in houses and schools. 

Now, I love antique malls.  There is a pain that you get when you see certain things.  For me, a salt shaker with a red and blue sailboat can send me back to my Grandmother’s kitchen.  Long and wide, with a Franklin stove and one door refrigerator, I am there.  It hurts with a beautiful kind of ache.  For a few seconds, the house still stands. The old radio plays, the clothesline strung across the width of room curtains the space into two, and my Grandmother grabs for her “apern” to do up these few dishes before going up the ‘burg.

My sister often purchases small dolls.  It is her connection to the past.  I received an eight inch doll on my birthday one year.  But she did not have one.  We lobbied incessantly for her to have a mate.  My parents explained that giving her a doll would mean she got a present for my birthday.  We did not care; we needed that second doll.  It was one of the few times I can remember bullying my folks into a purchase. We also had paper dolls. I still have a box of paper dolls, including Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Annette Funicello, and Pat Boone.  I remember a day, so long ago, when my father ran into a store and came back triumphant with two sets of wedding themed paper dolls, one for my sister and one for me.  I found those paper dolls for sale, once.  He paid twenty-nine cents. I paid ten dollars.  They are in a closet, waiting for my kids to get rid of someday.  They remind them of nothing, so it’s okay.  While I live, the dreams of a little girl rest in those cardboard dolls with their paper finery. 

Write down your childhood.  Do not deny yourself keepsakes from them.  Ask for copies of the pictures that mean the most to you.  And do not be discouraged if memories belong only to you.  Mark the good things, time marches on and over everything.  And while that is meant to be, your memories are also meant to be.  The good parts of our lives are for sustaining us during the bad.  Don’t deny them. Answer the child you were with the adult you are and listen to the call from the past.  It has a guiding, encouraging ability like nothing else in our lives.