Childhood memories

Two of my on-line friends are the ones that really inspired me to start a blog. I was reading their blogs (after hearing them talk about them for some time) and one friend mentioned her childhood memories and how vivid they can be, down to the smell or feel of something. My other friend then commented on the same topic line, and I thought I would, too. We all had the same general consensus-we each hoped that our children had good childhood memories that were vivid enough to last into adulthood.

I have so many that are just little wisps of a memory, nothing specific-a smell that is hard to explain, but makes me think of Gramma C and eating at her house (kind of a melted butter/meaty/spicy smell-told you it's hard to explain). Whenever I smell peonies, I think of my Gramma L.

Others are very specific to a certain event or time-Whenever I hear the song "Radar Love" I see my sister and I driving along in her little blue Sundance on a hot summer day, singing at the tops of our lungs. I hear a June bug and I break out in a cold sweat thanks to a summer vacation some twenty-odd years ago and the wood door in our basement being left open a crack. Let's just say that I lay in bed and listened to the buzz and crunch that filled the house while my Dad killed hundreds of those blasted bugs in our basement. I think of "the West" and I flash back to a tiny little roadside diner that my mom, my sister and I ate at while on a Girls Trip to N/S Dakota, Montana and Wyoming when I was maybe 12. I have no idea where the diner was (Wyoming, I think) but I remember it was red and there were the typical "local-yokels" who all turned when us strangers walked in.

I hope that my girls can develop those type of memories (well, except for the one w/ the June bugs) and remember them always. Maybe they will have a smell that reminds them of my mom, or a song that reminds them of their sisterhood. Maybe there will be that one picture that everyone thinks of (like the pic of my dad wearing an Alabama shirt, permed hair and bushy mustache-it was the 80s after all) when they think of so-and-so. I just hope and pray that they have wonderful memories of their younger years, that last them their entire lives. If they do, that means that Andy and I have done our jobs-we've helped our children to have happy childhoods that they can remember with a smile, or a smell, or a song.