Tagged Again!

Carol tagged me and so here is the result:

Five Things I Miss from My Childhood

1. Childhood innocence -- Life was so much more simple when I was a child. I never knew a day of worry where my next meal would come from or if a roof would be over my head and the worst thing that could happen was getting a bad grade in school. Schools were relatively safe places to be, there was little violence and no drugs to speak of. In looking back, I had a happy life then though it wasn't until later that I realized how good I had it.

2. My grandparents. I have such happy memories of the love of my grandparents on both sides of the family. Grampy Hannah had an old car whose make and model I never knew, but which would be a prize entry today in a classic auto show. I remember spending the night at Grammy and Grampy Hannah's home in Attleboro and listening to the snap of the heater in the living room, sleeping on the fold out bed in the grey sofa that used to be in our home, exploring the fascinating cave of their closet that housed not only clothing, but Grammy's stock of Avon cosmetics, and eating bedtime snacks of cereal with brown sugar with Grampy, who was diabetic. I don't have many memories of Grampy Savoy as I was fairly young when he died and our visits were confined to two weeks every summer until he died when I was in grade 2, but I have a lot of memories of Grammy Savoy. I loved the old cast iron stove in the kitchen which not only baked the most delectable homemade bread, but also served to heat the house. And going up the the Miramachi region to visit with Grandmere and Grandpere Brideau was also a treat. Grampy Brideau played the fiddle and I remember watching him play while Great Uncle Tony step danced in their kitchen and even tried a few steps myself.

3. Speaking of the Miramachi, I enjoyed my visits there to see all the relatives on my mom's side of the family when I was little. The smell of salt water, fishing off the wharf at Burnt Church, picking wild strawberries at Uncle Cecil's, and hunting for wild kittens in Great Aunt Gladys's barn and then having boiled salmon and potatoes for supper along with homemade bread and molasses -- that was the stuff of happiness. Part of the allure was also the fact that every time we travelled to New Brunswick, I got a new coloring book and crayons or some sort of craft type thing to while away the time it took to drive there from Massachusetts.

4. The Good News Chapel. This was the Plymouth Brethren assembly that I grew up in. At the time I attended it, it was a fairly small but active congregation of whom everyone felt like family. I have fond memories of the people there as I was growing up. I also miss Camp Berea, which was run by the Assemblies. I had a few good summers attending camp there.

5. The farmhouse in Dundas that my Dad grew up in. At various points different relatives lived there -- Grammy and Grampy would open it in the summer and I remember going to the brook with Grampy Hannah to get water in order to prime the pump for the well in the kitchen. Then Uncle Harry and Aunt Pat lived there for a while. Aunt Mae and Uncle Sherman finally took it over for good and one of my favorite things was to spend a night there in the summertime. The second floor bedrooms had windows on two walls and a cross breeze would blow in and when we built our present home, I insisted on windows on two walls for our bedrooms. The sight of the filmy white curtains billowing in the cool breeze, the feeling of generational continuity that permeated the house, the apple orchard, trips to the outhouse, the homey and comforting scent of hay in the old barn all form a three dimensional picture that still serves to give me pleasure when I think of it now.

Of course, things tend to assume a rosier glow in retrospect than what I probably experienced at the time I was actually going through it. And trips down memory lane are more fun for the person experiencing them than they are for outsiders who are only reading about them. Even so, I had fun doing this. Thanks, Carol for the few minutes of pleasure this gave me.

Remove the blog at No.1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the No.5 spot. I've linked to their posts on childhood, with the URLs for you as well:

1. Black Currant Jam http://blackcurantjam.blogspot.com/2005/06/meme-5-things-i-miss.html
2. Allthings2all http://allthings2all.blogspot.com/2005/06/i-wanted-green-hair.html
3. Tales of a Farmwife http://alynnmusic.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-childhood.html
4. Carol's Storybook http://parentingdecisions.com/blog/2005_06.html#003616
5. Reformed Musings http://www.knoxknoxwhosthere.blogspot.com
And pick four people. Thanks!