Journey with me, will you, to my childhood? You know, those summer days that in our minds, seemed to go on forever. How I remember waking to the smell of lilacs outside my bedroom window on a sun drenched summer morning, bacon frying downstairs, and the sharp aroma of my dad’s coffee perking in the silver coffee maker that sat bubbling over our GE electric stove. Oh yes, and my mother’s singing, wafting through the house, with a comfort that made everything in this little girls life just right.
I was the youngest of three siblings, and probably the “whoops” child, although that never stopped me from feeling fully loved, and a bit spoiled from two adoring siblings. A Midwest child, from a good old down to earth, salt of the earth, home grown, strong work ethic, stay at home mom, kind of a family. My father loomed large in our house. He demanded respect, and got it. The smell of Old Spice aftershave still brings me back to simpler times, innocent days, when I wanted nothing more in a day than to make my dad proud of me, to hear his laugh, approval.
Can you recall those days of running through sprinklers, spitting watermelon seeds, and that delicious time between afternoon shadows and dusk falling, when you hear your mom calling you to supper, and you want to stay and wait for the fireflies to come out and play? Warm summer afternoons, shouting over the fence to a neighbor friend, “Can you play?” Lying on your backs, pointing up to cumulus cotton balls, finding an elephant, and watching it morph into a leaping jaguar.
How easy it is to slip back to those days of front porch swings, fresh mown grass, the laughter of young girls washing dishes in the kitchen…
My life changed when I was fourteen. Not an easy age for a young girl, as I began entering the world of womanhood, and not sure if I wanted to go. Life was changing whether I wanted it to or not. Both of my siblings had already left home, and I was trying to figure out what my friends found so fascinating in boys.
I wasn’t a beauty, more a gangly teenager, who fought acne flare ups now and then, but I did somehow get attention from the opposite gender. I had wanted long hair all my life, and was finally allowed to grow out my blonde hair until it swished down my back straight and thick, sometimes caught back in a pony tail. Dad wanted me to stay a little girl; mom gently reminded him that I was growing up.
Perhaps my mom named me Grace after one of her favorite movie stars, the classy and exquisite Grace Kelley. Or perhaps she knew in her mother’s heart, that I was a child that would need lots and lots of grace.
So, on a rainy November evening, when shade trees were skeletal and even the resilient evergreen swayed in the brisk autumn evening, my world was altered in a way never to return to innocence.