Memories

Have you ever been doing something and a memory so powerful stops you in your tracks?  This morning on the way back home I was reciting nursery rhymes to Patrick.  He likes the rhythm of the words and waits for the end and then claps and yells 'YAY!!! YAY!!!'

Right in the middle of  'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick...' I found myself being about 4 years old back in my grandma's living room.  She was always reciting nursery rhymes to us when we were little.  Around Christmastime we always got to hear  'Twas the Night Before Christmas' from memory and for nap time we heard her version of 'Riding Pony to Nap Town'.

She loved to tell us stories.  Fairy tales or stories that she made up as she went along...it kept us entertained for hours.  Well that and putting us in chicken boxes with a pair of scissors and all the paper we could possibly cut up.

I guess the 'gotcha' moment for me was that none of her great-grandchildren will ever have those moments with her.  Lord, they would have been spoiled rotten if she had lived to see any of them!  They would have also known what 'isolation' meant, how to properly hold  a goblet or drink out of the aluminum cup until they learned!  They would have had their imaginations expanded, a head start on any other child their age and would understand in a moment exactly when they needed to change their behavior because that peach tree was just a hop, jump and leap out to the side of her front door and if you couldn't pick a proper limb she knew just where to find it oh, and they would all  probably  have a pair of 2 sizes too big tennis shoes with kleenex stuffed in the toes that would help them outrun anybody in their whole class!

So I pulled into the driveway...'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick...'