i wanted my childhood back,....i wanted all those good, warm, fuzzy feelings they try and sell packaged in a disney movie
i wanted to forget the sound of my mother yelling, or the deafening silence of my father's disconcerting 30 mile away absence
as a child i would spend a month or two, of the summer, at my grandmothers in georiga,....i'd spend my weeks shuttling around the south with brenda,...various art classes, meetings of the lady's jr league, plays, musicals,.....all the activities she deamed 'right' for a young lady, though she'd only raised boys,...and occasionally i'd break away from the stifleing heavily magnolia scented air and excape to my great grand mother's house in north carolina
me maw's house,...
i always did look forward to me maw's house,...there's a water fall you know,....
i remember her house always smelled like food,.....jelly,....greens,...
.pie,......ham
sweltering, it was,.....even in its high mountionous altitude,....
the sound of an ol squeeking rocking chair as she sat on the porch watching me play, pauseing in her silence to ask me if i wanted anything,.....i never did want for anything, but she never did stop asking
one of the first real memories i have there, is of the summer i made friends with the neighbor boy,...i couldnt have been more than 8, or he more than 10,...
his name was david, and he was blonde,...he had one of those chili bowl hair cuts that had grown to long and often obstructed his view,....but what apealed to me most was his gappy teeth when he grinned, and the way his knees were always a scabby and beat all to hell
i thought david knew the secrets of the whole world,...and to me, they were all wrapped up in his gappy teeth and scabby knees
every morning i would get up and tuck honey suckle behind my ears, in hope that david might come by after breakfast and ask me to 'do something'
our first venture was to the neighboring barn,...old and red, and ready to fall in,.....david taught me how to look for owl pellets in the loft and then discet them to see what the owls had been eating,...
i was quite proud of me self, to say the least, when i'd put together a whole mouse skelleton, all by myself,.....i didnt yet have a handle that it was regurgitation
that night, like every night after (atleast for the next two weeks) me maw called me in well after dark and sent david on his way,.....the both of us moveing in seperate directions, but both carrying a jar of fireflies
the night i arrived in north carolina,...alone, and adult,.....i saw fireflies
as i said,..i was there on a mission,....
it had been two years since my me maw died
i had,...have,...alot of guilt that i didnt spend more time with her as i got older,....but when your world opens up to cars, and pasture parties, and boys who take you on dates,....not involveing owl throw up,....sometimes you loose touch with your firefly jar
but there i was,....makeing my way up the drive,...to a home not longer in my family,....
i was angry they had sold it
i was angry my cousins would never know the same smells, sounds, neighbor boys that i did
i was angry that the only piece of that house i had, now lay in a picture of my four year old self prissily poseing as my grandfather handed me a flower on the back porch,...i remember that porch,....but not my grandfather
sometimes i wonder if im just searching for something i've made up in my head
was this falling down farm house really the all inclusive mountian retreat i remembered
was it the structure that was special?
was i searching for a pipe dream in the land of pork barbecue and bluegrass?
did that river, running by me maws, go to antry?
i'll never really know
but that night i slept in my small hotel bed, with a jar of fireflies on the night stand
sweltering, it was,.....even in its high mountionous altitude,....
the sound of an ol squeeking rocking chair as she sat on the porch watching me play, pauseing in her silence to ask me if i wanted anything,.....i never did want for anything, but she never did stop asking
one of the first real memories i have there, is of the summer i made friends with the neighbor boy,...i couldnt have been more than 8, or he more than 10,...
his name was david, and he was blonde,...he had one of those chili bowl hair cuts that had grown to long and often obstructed his view,....but what apealed to me most was his gappy teeth when he grinned, and the way his knees were always a scabby and beat all to hell
i thought david knew the secrets of the whole world,...and to me, they were all wrapped up in his gappy teeth and scabby knees
every morning i would get up and tuck honey suckle behind my ears, in hope that david might come by after breakfast and ask me to 'do something'
our first venture was to the neighboring barn,...old and red, and ready to fall in,.....david taught me how to look for owl pellets in the loft and then discet them to see what the owls had been eating,...
i was quite proud of me self, to say the least, when i'd put together a whole mouse skelleton, all by myself,.....i didnt yet have a handle that it was regurgitation
that night, like every night after (atleast for the next two weeks) me maw called me in well after dark and sent david on his way,.....the both of us moveing in seperate directions, but both carrying a jar of fireflies
the night i arrived in north carolina,...alone, and adult,.....i saw fireflies
as i said,..i was there on a mission,....
it had been two years since my me maw died
i had,...have,...alot of guilt that i didnt spend more time with her as i got older,....but when your world opens up to cars, and pasture parties, and boys who take you on dates,....not involveing owl throw up,....sometimes you loose touch with your firefly jar
but there i was,....makeing my way up the drive,...to a home not longer in my family,....
i was angry they had sold it
i was angry my cousins would never know the same smells, sounds, neighbor boys that i did
i was angry that the only piece of that house i had, now lay in a picture of my four year old self prissily poseing as my grandfather handed me a flower on the back porch,...i remember that porch,....but not my grandfather
sometimes i wonder if im just searching for something i've made up in my head
was this falling down farm house really the all inclusive mountian retreat i remembered
was it the structure that was special?
was i searching for a pipe dream in the land of pork barbecue and bluegrass?
did that river, running by me maws, go to antry?
i'll never really know
but that night i slept in my small hotel bed, with a jar of fireflies on the night stand
