Another meme?

Viki has tagged me with a meme entitled:

"What 5 things do you miss about your childhood?"

First: the rules to this meme game.

Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog's name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross pollination effect:

1. Searchin' for a Rainbow
2. Aint it Amazing?
3. Spit Noodle & Joey
4. VikiBabbles
5. Romantic Ramblings

Next: select new friends to add to the pollen count. (No one is obligated to participate).

1. Candace
2. Michelle
3. Schnoodlepooh (I just LOVE that name!)
4. Anybody else! If you want to participate, just go ahead and do it. Copy that link list above, remove the one on the top, add yours on the bottom, and pass it around, okay?

Okay, so, on to the 5 things I miss about my childhood.

1. I miss the feeling of safety and security I had growing up in a home with two devoted, loving parents. No dysfunction in our family! Dad went to work in the morning and Mom stayed home and did all the Mom things. We were rich compared to some and dirt poor compared to others, but we never lacked anything we really needed. Mom and Dad had to forego a lot to put two kids through college, but they did it.

I’m glad Carol and I have been able to provide the same stability and security for our two girls when they were kids.

2. Family vacations were always special! We’d usually just take one week during the summer and go the beach somewhere. Cape May, New Jersey was an early favorite. We would drive, of course, and I still remember as a real little fella how excited I’d get when we saw a train. Later I became aware of airplanes and was just as excited when I saw one of those. Hey, this was back in the 1950s, y’all. Airplanes still had propellers then—even the big ones!

3. I miss the sure knowledge that my Dad knew absolutely everything and could do or fix absolutely anything. He was my idol, my superhero. He was stronger than anybody in the world and nothing could hurt him ever.

One summer he took the manual transmission out of our old ’52 Ford and rebuilt it in our basement. I can still picture the gears and shafts, gaskets and bearings, pins and other unnamed parts laid out carefully on the concrete floor. I was in total awe that anyone could possibly put all that stuff together again and that it would work!

I’m really glad I didn’t find out that he was mortal until I was an adult. It was still impossible for me to believe, even when I was almost 30, that he could suddenly die.

4. I miss the talks I had with my Mom as I went through the agonies of becoming a teenager, realizing that girls were different in a nice way (not just because they had cooties). She soothed my pains after my first crush went awry, and provided me with wise advice in subsequent romantic encounters. In fact, a little bit of that is in my novel.

5. I guess I miss the feeling that each day lasted for a very long time. A week was like a year, and a season was like a lifetime. Now the days fly past, the weeks are but a moment, and each year seems to be gone before I realize it has arrived.