Monday, June 27, 2005

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.

8 comments:

kenju said...

John, I loved reading this, and so much of what you said could have been written by me also. I particularly agree with the last one; the older I get, the faster time flies. My mom told me that would happen, but I didn't believe her.

VikiBabbles said...

Beautifully done. I knew I tagged you for a reason.

And for that, I'm going to go back and do that fridge meme thing you tagged me with a while back. Especially since I've got a new fridge now, and it's not all schmucky like the old one was.

Karyn Lyndon said...

Re: number 5. Reminds me of my the poem I posted called Endless Summers.

Did somebody say fridge tag???

Candace said...

John, what a treat to read about your childhood! It was written so well that I could feel the peace and joy of that time for you.

Arghhhh! Fridge meme! I forgot all about it. Maybe that's just as well.
:)

the many Bs said...

Thanks for inviting me to play in your "meme". I don't know what a meme is, but I still played anyway. How do you make the links without displaying the URL?
Peg

Anonymous said...

We could have grown up in the same family (excepting for a girl breaking my heart *grin*). Your childhood sounded exactly like mine so I had to change the slant of my meme a bit. But woman can do that - change things on a whim without having to justify why we did it *lol*.

I always say I was lucky as I definitely grew up in a child-friendly era and we always had fun, that was the beauty of it.

Monica said...

a wonderful post...I hope my children have good memories of their childhoods as they are growing up.

Duke_of_Earle said...

Monica,

From what I read in your posts, there's no question about it!

John