Looking Back

Very recently on her blog, my mother posted remembrances of the first house she lived in back in Aubrey. The small details that she remembered jogged my memory and made me think of things long stored away in the recesses of my mind. I grew up in a brick, Ranch style house on the outskirts of Aubrey, AR. I could write at length regarding things that stand out in my mind from my child hood there, but there are a few things worthy of public dissemination. My carpet was lime green. It wasn't a terrible lime green, but it was pretty loud. I was forever attempting to load my BB gun in my bedroom. I never managed to get all the BBs into the gun. They invariably fell into the carpet causing my mother to go on at length about how tired she was at having to vaccum up BBs every time she cleaned. I remember the day my parents got new recliners. They old ones had lived long past their usefulness. Dad lectured us all about how we were to leave them alone and not tear them up. He was going to have this chair for a long time. The next night, Dad sat down in his new recliner, recline in it, and leaned back too far. The base split down the middle and he rolled over backwards in his brand new, useless recliner. I remember thinking how funny it was then that nothing at all was said. I still think my life may have ended had I done that to his new chair.

I remember playing in the rain outside the carport in the water puddles with my brother and sister and having a blast. I can remember Mom under the carport looking on in amusement and dad out in the rain with a shovel digging ditches trying to get the water out of the driveway while lamenting and ranting about the fact that he had built our house in a hole. I remember sitting around the dinner table on Sunday nights after church. Sometimes we would order pizza and Mom and Dad would tell stories about growing up. I heard the tales of their childhood friends, stories of the Poe brothers, the Leonard cousins, and different times my parents got into trouble. I enjoyed the nights when we watched America's Funniest Home Videos (back when Bob Saget hosted), but the nights around the table were best. I used to sit there and pray they wouldn't notice bed time had arrived so I could hear one more story. I would try so hard to remember them because I knew there was no way I could ever develop such a repertoire of fine stories.

I remember Mom leaving me a $5 bill on the counter with a note telling she loved me. She knew I didn't have the money for gas in college. The $5 was nice, but I still have the notes. They're still worth more than the money, even with inflation factored in.

I remember looking up at the stars with Dad at 2 a.m. after getting back from a horseshow. The sky was so clear at night that it felt like you could reach up and pull yourself into the Milky Way. I still think about him when the sky's clear and you can see every star in the sky.

The stories could go on and on. I could write about all the time I spent out in the barn having shootouts with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and all the villains of the American West, sitting on the couch with Mom talking about my latest teen disaster, or hiding in my closet after I heard Dad's truck pull into the driveway after Mom had said, "Wait until your father gets home."

The house is still there, but Mom and Dad don't live there. My grandparents moved in after we left and made it there own. It doesn't look like it did when we lived there. That's not a bad thing, it's there house and they live there now. Not everything changed though. When I go visit, I stay in the guest bedroom, my old room. The paint is different, and so is the furniture. The only remnant of the room I slept in for 20 years is the ceiling fan. I can lay down in that strange bed, turn off the lights and turn on the ceiling fan. It still clicks and moves like it did for 20 years. As I lay there in the dark with only a ceiling fan to remind me, those memories aren't as far away as I thought. Some make me laugh and some make me cry, but most make me do both at the same time, the latter a result of the former. All in all, an excellent childhood I do believe.