When I was growing up it wasn't uncommon to find corner stores or restaurants that had screen doors with push bars advertising one thing or another. You would go into the shop, the door banging behind you, and feel like you were home. These kinds of places always smelled so good - a bakery, a candy store, a sandwich shop, a mom and pop grocery - you just knew that some wonderful treat awaited you there. Popsicles on a hot summer day... I could never decide between blueberry, banana or root beer. Remember how they used to come as doubles and you would break them in two while still in their wrapper? Or rows and rows of penny candy to choose from. There was some magic in that screen door, I swear. Now when you see those doors they're largely in modern stores staged to look nostalgic.
I loved second grade. There was just something so cozy, safe and almost familial about my classroom. We sat in reading circles and muddled through Dick, Jane and Sally stories and used Sanford tempera paints and water colors on thick manila paper to create works of art that were proudly carried home to our parents. Above the blackboard (which was actually green), there were examples of each letter of the alphabet, written in cursive in upper and lower case that we would practice writing on our lined tablets with fat pencils. Sometimes a big storm would roll through town and through the classroom windows I would see the menacing dark clouds, jumping at the claps of thunder and the jagged bolts of lightning. Inside the classroom, though, it was bright and cheery and I felt so insulated from everything scary. My teacher's desk had the peonies I had brought her from our backyard garden displayed in a vase. My mother would go out to gather them in the morning before I left for school, wrapping the stems in a wet paper towel, then covering it with foil and I would shyly hand them to her, hurrying to my desk in time to say the Pledge.
There were so many kids in my neighborhood! We played hard every day - venturing outdoors right after breakfast until being summoned home by our parents at dark. During the day we played all of the familiar games - dodgeball, SPUD, statuemaker, tag, hide and seek, softball, jump rope and many more. One of my friends had a fort her dad had built for her in their backyard that became a sort of clubhouse for us. We drifted from yard to yard, pausing to play on swing sets, sometimes bringing out board games, progressively getting dirtier by the minute. I remember my friend and I picking firm, round tomatoes from her garden, dusty and a little warm from the sun, and eating them like apples. We played Milles Bourne under a shade tree with some kids we didn't even really like that well, but summer was a great equalizer and somehow we all managed to get along. At night, after my bath, I would put on my babydoll pajamas and my sister and I would fall asleep in our bedroom with no air conditioning (!) - just an old oscillating fan and open windows. We weren't afraid of abductors or predators, only wary of the stories we'd heard about hobos who jumped from the freight trains that passed through town and lived in the woods. It makes me a little sad that my grandchildren live in a different kind of world without the simple childhood freedoms that I had always taken for granted.
Truly, there are thousands of these little memory snapshots that span my entire life (so far) that I can call to mind instantly. They aren't milestones or life changing events, just the tiny joyfuls I've collected along the way. Things like the scent of suntan lotion; the sound an oar makes as it dips through the water on a lake; fireflies in a Mason jar; singing along to a favorite song on the car radio or sitting on the bleachers at a Little League game. It's the taste of water straight from the hose, sleeping on a screen porch while being serenaded by crickets or how you feel when you see the first snowflake of the season. My hope is that you will go to sleep tonight recalling those sweet everyday moments that were woven into the fabric of your own life while savoring the new ones as they're encountered. Sweet dreams!
