Month: June 2014

A thought occurred to me as I was sitting at breakfast this sunny Sunday morning, lazily sipping coffee, my eyes grazing over the local paper between bites of eggs and oats.  It really struck me just how much I love this little ritual of meal and newspaper, the calm of morning, when the sun is bright and streaming through the windows and the day is new and young and full of promise.  And the house is quiet and the warm scent of coffee dances in and out of each room.  As I was basking in the comfort of this familiar daily task, it also occurred to me how many times this scene has played out inside the walls of this old house.  The thought warmed me as much as my cup of java and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of memories and nostalgia.

I am blessed enough to live in the house my grandparents lived in for over 40 years.  I am able to carry on the traditions and holidays and celebrations within a home I was half raised in, that my father and his siblings and their children were all raised in.  Growing up as an only child, it was always a treat to “go to Granny’s.”  There was always a house full of people, be it family, friends or neighbors who came to sit a spell, and there was always home cookin’ to eat.  My grandmother was one of 7 sets of twins within her immediate family and she and her twin brother Gordon, who for whatever reason we all called “Bud,” lived right beside one another.  In the summer they planted a huge garden that stretched across the backyards of both houses and my Papaw and great uncle tended to it.  My granny was a phenomenal cook and my favorite meal she cooked was her breakfast.  Cat head biscuits with sausage gravy with sausage patties on the side, homemade strawberry jam made with freshly picked strawberries from Scott Farms in Unicoi, brown sugar syrup and peanut butter, and always sliced tomatoes and cucumbers with salt straight from that very garden in the backyard.  Every summer my momma still makes that strawberry jam, and soon so will I.

Before I get too carried away rambling on about memories from my childhood, my point of this entry is to discuss how I still wish things were like the “good ol’ days.”  I yearn for a time long gone, some from even long before I was born, when life was more simple and wholesome and clear cut.  When most people had gardens because that’s what they had to eat from, not because it was the hipster thing to do.  And men like my papaw got up on Sunday mornings just like this one and read the local paper while women just like my grandmother served them coffee.  And ladies got up and dressed for the day EVERYDAY, even if they were only planning on working around the house and running errands.  I guess you could call me a chauvinist.  (Before everyone gets their panties in a wad, please remember this is MY blog and MY opinions and in the grand scheme of things my opinion means nothing and if you disagree or don’t like it then I guess you can always hit that red X in the top right corner of your screen.) But I believe men should still get up and go to work and be the main providers for their family, while women fix their hair and dab on a bit of makeup and maintain the functions within the home and family.  I long for a time when women just like my grandmother and her sisters would sit on the “carport” and gossip and sneak cigarettes, because back then everyone smoked.  I remember thinking, even in their 60’s and 70’s, how chic and classy these women looked with their curled bouffants and extra long Virginia Slim cigarettes.  They would gather at dusk, after all the meals had been cooked and served and all the dishes and laundry had been put away and the floors had been mopped and the shelves had been dusted.  They would sit in lawn chairs and bask in the last fleeting moments of summer sunshine, their conversations only murmured by the rise and fall of the hum of cicadas and the impending song of a lone owl.  I wish that children today could walk down to Red’s, the gas station diner at the end of my road, and get a cheeseburger and a Popsicle for lunch on a hot summer day.  Then walk around the corner to the baptist church in the evenin’ for bible school.  I wish those kids could spend their nights chasing lightning bugs and picking honeysuckle until they collapsed in their beds from exhaustion instead of playing on their iPads inside all day.   I wish I could have went down to Barnes Boring, the hardware store downtown, to pick up a screwdriver, before mega stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot undercut their business with lower prices and mass production.  Strange as it sounds, sometimes I miss only having 3 fuzzy channels on the big box tv that set in the floor.  It was comforting to be able to tell what time of day it was by the background noise on the television set. “Andy Griffith” was always whistling in the afternoons, “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” always made for fun after-dinner entertainment for the whole family and if “Price is Right” was on and you were just waking up, you were definitely late for breakfast!

But these times have long passed.  Red’s is closed, cigarettes are bad and technology is king.  The world today is all about speed and convenience.  Fast food and smart phones have replaced home-cooked breakfasts and sunset patio conversations.  I can’t change the entire world on my own.  But I will upkeep the little traditions, the daily tasks that may seem so insignificant to others.  I’ll keep getting my paper delivered instead of reading it online.  I’ll wear fancy hats when it’s appropriate.  Even though my grandparents’ garden is long grown over, I will plant tomatoes in a little raised bed behind the garage and I will slice them and eat them with salt with my breakfast.  I’ll still stop and smell honeysuckle and I’ll have my girlfriends over for gossip and a smoke.  Because if you don’t honor your past you’ll have no blueprint for your future.  Time is passing so fast.  Maybe what we all need is to slow down and give ourselves a daily dose of nostalgia.