Today, something triggered me to remember the simple things that I did that I loved the most as I was growing up. If I think of all the memories of my childhood it seems to be the simple things that stand out the most to me.
One of my oldest memory is so simple that it happened every night. Every day, hopefully, everyone takes a bath. My parents of course tried to make everything fun for us when we were two, including bath time. Shelby and I would use our shampoo to make what I thought was the world's biggest bubble bath. We even had a little saxophone toy that you could blow bubbles out of! I don't know why but it seemed like Shelby and I would have so much fun at bath time. What was the best part was the rare occasion of getting to use the blow dryer afterwards. Since neither of us has hair until we were practically four, I don't really understand why we ever used it.
The next thing that reminds me of my childhood is sun tea. In case you don't know what "sun tea" is, it's when you make tea with the heat of the sun instead of using water heated by the stove. Now making sun tea is quite a long process. I'm talking a couple of hours at the very least. When we were little it seemed like Mom was always making sun tea. We would set the pitcher on the West side of the house, right by the driveway, so that it could catch the evening sun. I remember playing outside in the summer and having to go check to see just how far along the tea was every 15 minutes. I could not wait until it was ready!
One of the many things that I took for granted was riding horses with my Dad. When I was little I guess that you could have easily said that I had my dad "wrapped around my little finger". When the day finally arrived when I told my Dad that I wanted a horse of my own, at a moments notice he had a horse ready to be mine. My horse, Divi, was a old mare that one of Dad's friends had. She was in her 20's and just old and calm enough to stick a three year old on. She was an amazing horse. While Dad worked out in the yard he would open up the horse lot and throw me on Divi and tell me to hold on to her mane. I never really needed a saddle with this horse. The second that she felt me leaning to one side she would stop and wait for me to adjust myself, or adjust me herself, and then continue to follow Dad around the yard. Once Divi got a little older and passed away, Dad got me another horse, JR. Now JR was equally as great of a horse. I decided that I was going to run barrels and he was the horse that I was going to do it on. Dad and I spent countless hours in the horse lot chasing cans until the sun had set so much that we no longer could see the horses head in front of us. I wish that I still had the time to spend the hours with Dad, as he taught me such great things.
Now if anyone in my family could tell you the one thing that I am not very partial to, it's cats. Well I dislike all cats except for one. This one cat is a little different than most cats. In fact, we often refer to him as a 'coon because he is so big. When I was four my mom brought home a litter of cats from the pound. There were four of them. Shelby got to have two, and I got to have the other two. Being four, I named my two cats Kermit and Barney. Real original. At first we didn't know how long Barney would make it. One cold morning Dad went out to start his truck and get the heater running and when the motor started it cut off half of Barney's tail. Well over the years we have lost three of the four cats, but not Barney. There were months that would go by that Barney would flat out disappear, then one day you would be in the barn, hear a meow, look up, and there is Barney. Late January a few years ago I remember hearing this meow in our garage. For a few days we just ignored it. Later when we opened up the attic we found Barney. The attic had not been opened since the first week of January when we put Christmas decorations up. Of all of the terrible things that Barney has gone through, he has still managed to stick it out. This huge, ripped cat has survived 20 of a cat's 7 lives and fifteen years later he still is beasting it up.
Out of all of my childhood memories, the weirdest one is this light pole. It is weird that I would remember a light on top of a 50ft pole out of all the things that I was blessed to play with as a child. This light used to shine down on the entrance to the barn. I partially blame the reason that I still do not sleep to this day on this particular light. When I would sleep in the living room, I would stay up and make the shadows that this light created from shinning in the windows into funny shapes. It was the reason that I never wanted to sleep in my bed and I never slept. It also provided a sense of security to me when I went to feed my pigs in the dark by myself. This light reminds me of many occasions. It was the first thing that Dad told me not to hit when I was learning to drive a tractor and mow as well as being the best defense I had against a few crazy steers of mine. A few years ago this light got struck by lightning and no longer works. It is kind of sad to think that it no longer illuminates our yard, but I would like to think that it served as a lightning rod that kept our barn or house from being struck.
If you asked me to this day what my favorite toy was when I was growing up, I would definitely not say that it was the most expensive one. Other than my doll, it was the simple things that I remember and loved the most. I remember riding in the back of my Dad's jeep after tee ball games and getting sno-cones that covered our face with stickiness better than I remember the fancy electronics that I was given. I always have loved driving and there were times that I would rather mow the yard than be inside watching the TV. However the simplest thing that sticks out the most to me was my sister and I have olympic style games one day just to see who could sleep on what side of the couch at my Mimi and Poppie's house that night. The simplest thing that I will never forget was just being at my Gommie's house. We would make her house into a hair salon, a parade route for floats that we made, and we would use the horse apples that covered her yard as balls for kicking and throwing. We would use her neighbor's storm cellar as a fort, and we would use her kitchen as a classroom. To this day, I would still rather drink tea out of an old jar vs a cup and use mismatched silverware because of the memories that I had at her house.
Of all the material things that everyone, including myself, dream and pray for, why is it that the things that are the cheapest are some the things that we love and remember the most. It was washing my parents vehicles for $5 so that after saving for a year I would have enough for a something materialistic, when the car wash turned into a family wide contests who could get each other soaked. I don't remember the object that I bought, but I remember working hard for earn every penny to buy it. If everyone would be a little less materialistic, me included, and a little more open to spontaneous ideas, would the world not be an even more enjoyable place?
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