Is there a place in your memories that left such an impression on you that years later, you still recall every detail of it?
My Aunt Margaret lived next door in a little yellow house with a green shingle roof. Sometimes my parents would work late into the evening, so after school, I’d often-times find myself in her living room eating bubble gum ice cream and watching the Dukes of Hazzard. If I sit quietly and close my eyes to imagine, then neurons that haven’t fired in years begin to exercise once again, leaping back across the wide synapses to my childhood. And for a moment, I can almost taste the humid air of home again as, in my mind…
Many A Memory From Many A Year
I started up the redwood staircase, pausing to scrap the mud from my boots on the green outdoor carpet of the first step. I always entered her house through the back door that opened out onto the deck. That seemed to be the way of it in my neck of the woods. We rarely, if ever used front doors. In fact, now that I think of it, it seems we went out of our way to avoid them.
As I topped the stairs I could recall every detail of that comfortable sitting area. Too many times to count we’d spread newspaper over the top of the weathered old redwood picnic table. Aunt Margaret would slip down the cool, dark hallway from the kitchen into the basement and emerge with a giant watermelon from the icebox. She would slide the long blade of a knife through the top of that cold melon until the weight of it’s halves, pulled apart by their own gravity, cracked as they split open. She’d carve the halves up into generous portions for each of us, put the salt shaker out, and take a seat across the table from me. The first over-zealous bite would overflow my mouth to run sticky down my cheek. We’d talk, and laugh, and spit our seeds out with reckless abandon on the typeset worries of a restless world. All the while, down below, the eager cows would congregate along the fence row, awaiting the next juicy rind to be tossed. Memories buzz round that porch like flies on the melon.
The Preacher, The Fisherman and the Cahaba
A Work in Progress
I spent a long time there in my mind, and as I left down the steps for the last time, a single tear rolled down my check, gathered at my chin and fell gently down to the green outdoor carpet below.
