summer mornings & memories

isn't it funny how you can read the words of a complete stranger & they can evoke the strongest memories? i was reading this entry in a blog called "a journal of sorts..." & something in the words she chose transported me right back to the most vivid recollection of my childhood. not one specific day but more a span of days that replayed in comforting similarity over the course of years.

summer mornings.

i wish i had a photo that could capture the memories in my head for you. so you could be here too. =) it was good times. summer vacation. i could have been 7 or 9 or 12. it could have been any day of the week. maybe it was July. maybe it was August. it could be any of those days. it was all of them.

i was lucky enough to have grandparents (my paternal ones) that played an extremely active role in my upbringing. their house was the best place to be. not just in the summer but year round. i digress...

all summer long it was commonplace for me to just live at my grandparents' which was about 10 minutes from home. they had 3.5 acres with lush backyard, an orchard & these great gardens that were my grandfather's pride & joy, filled with lucious summer bounty. there was green grass & bright flowers. giant shade trees for sitting under in the heat of the day & flat rocks for laying on as you gazed at the puffy summer clouds. and this long bumpy driveway. i can see it all in my mind's eye & i wish you could too...but sometimes more than the picture, it's the feelings it dredges up from my long-tucked-away memory bank.

on summer mornings i would wake up at daybreak. literally. i would pad downstairs to the kitchen for chocolate milk & toast spread with homemade jelly, sitting at the little round kitchen table with my Gram close-by puttering about, my Gramp already long outdoors, elbow-deep in the dirt & his vegetables. and then i would run back upstairs, put on shorts & a t-shirt and dash outside barefoot to run in the dew-drenched grass as the sun painted the sky in streaks of pastel. there is something still breath-taking about that misty, golden morning hour that enchants me. i was wise enough to memorize it in my heart even as a child who had yet to understand the beauty that was so breath-taking it is almost painful recall. but i can draw on it now with appreciation.

and a piece of my soul both aches & dances with the memory...