Thanks for the Memories

I'm grateful for having the ability to vividly recall moments in my life. The flash of a day in a childhood spring, getting prepared for an elementary school choral production where we'd been requested to wear pastels and having to ask when I got home what pastel meant. A summer afternoon on the playground when the expansion of our grammar school was going on, being the chaser of a boy for a kiss... hurtling over the deep ditch around the building that would have surely been the death of me had I lost my footing, a dress I wore to my elementary school graduation with a big, hot pink satin bow around it's waist, stopping after picking it up from Rich's layaway and having a dainty rosebud corsage put together at Maud Baker that the florist matched to the bow perfectly, my mother telling me after the ceremony that Ricky Bell's mother said he thought I was the prettiest girl in the class, sitting on rugs in Ms Carey's high school English Literature class hippy-style and being surprised when she presented me with an award from the county-wide competition held at North DeKalb Mall for an art poster I had prepared during our study of Macbeth and that she had entered without my knowledge, practicing cheers in front of Debra Gumz' house and having one of my cousins rush up after having gotten home from Okinawa when her father retired from military service--we didn't know when they would be arriving, finding that same cheerleading outfit in that cousin's closet years later and gleaning some awareness of how she had looked up to me, a summer spent with my cousins in Texas taking everyday swims in their clear, community pool, feeling like I would blister my feet on the cement around it, firefly catching at dusk and seeing a movie with the ride home that featured for my aunt's entertainment all of us singing the Oompa Loompa song along the way. I'm so fortunate to have these memories,. There are so many. I can almost squeeze myself back into those moments, they are so clear. Remembrance is dear to me and most of mine -- happy.