A Stroll Down Memory Lane

I grew up in a small town in middle tennessee called Watertown.  Our house was at the end of a dead end street, so I would ride  bikes, rollerskate in the middle of the road.  My grandmother had a beauty shop on the square--about 2 or 3 blocks from where we lived.  I would ride my bike or walk there, get a coke and hang out with my grandmother there.

My Granny Agnew lived on the other side of town, probably about a mile away from our house.  I would love going to her house.  In the summer she would always have a garden.  When I was little, she would plant strawberries.  We would take the garden hose and walk to the garden and pick and wash off the ripe strawberries and eat them under a little hackberry tree that was planted at the edge of the garden.

At 4:30 Granny and I would wait in the driveway for Granddaddy to get home from work.  When the car pulled up, I would run out to give him a hug. Granny would usually have supper ready when Granddaddy would come home....I really miss her homemade green beans---there was nothing else like them in the entire world!

My mom was a stay at home mom until I was in high school.  She was very hands on, and we were always so close.  I remember the time I was in Vanderbilt Hospital sick from where a doctor had given me an overdose of codine when I was 6 years old.  There is not much that I remember about that time....but Momma was always beside my bed.  In the years that followed, I found out that the doctors did not know if I would have make it through being so severely overdosed.  I don't know how mom stayed by my bed day in and day out like she did, because I mostly slept.

My mom was also a big reader.  I remember her constantly reading to me. She actually taught me to read long before I went to kindergarten--which drove Mrs. Bettancourt crazy, because I would be the first one done with everything and she did not know what to do with me.

Daddy always had a truck.  We would go out for rides in the country looking for deer.  On special occasions we would take out our cane fishing poles and fish on the creekbank.  I always enjoyed those times...maybe because daddy put the worm on the hook and if we caught anything he would take the fish off of mine and momma's line.

Many nights after supper, daddy and I would go outside and shoot basketball together.  He would do his coaching to help me get a little better at it.  I was not ever coordinated enough to be really good at sports, but dad's coaching at least helped me hang in with the rest of the girls in PE class when it came to playing basketball.

Sometimes I wonder if kids today will have those kind of memories of their families.  People are so busy, and to be honest I think alot of priorities are out of line.  You are only given one chance to have a childhood and make memories with your family.  Those memories are the events that shape who I became as an adult and shaped the way I put my priorities in order as an adult.I am just thankful that God gave me a family where making memories and spending time together was a priority.