Today I was driving to work in silence again. This is something I do often, because I just NEED silence. I crave it sometimes. A few weeks ago, I drove "home" (to my hometown, which is two hours away from my actual home) in silence. I have NEVER done that before. I love what happens when I'm driving in silence, though. I start remembering things from my childhood. This morning I had a memory from when I was four years old. Once I got to work, I started making my coffee and doing my usual things. I thought to myself "I was four when this happened. Miss P is almost four. I'm making memories with her NOW that she is going to remember when she's 31 years old." That's amazing to me. It reminded me that I need to make sure that I'm making awesome memories with her. It also reminded me that it's the small things that make the best memories, therefore it is the small things that make these "awesome" memories that I'm referring to. I will share mine with you.
Since I was four, it was sometime in 1986. It was one of the weekends I got to stay the night with my Grandma Donna and Grandpa John. A lot of you know the house that I grew up in, because it's the one that Will and Travis Fernandez' mom Paula owns. Yep. That's the one. The house my grandparents lived in when I was a child. I grew up there and I remember every square inch of crazy wallpaper and every square inch of bar space in that kitchen. The hump in the middle of the kitchen floor? Yep. I rolled over that a thousand times in my fisher price roller skates. I helped my mom and grandma make cinnamon rolls, cookies, snickerdoodles, banana bread, plum jelly, and many....MANY....other things on that counter top.
My memory today starts with me laying in what I remember as "the yellow flower room". My grandma loved flowers and her favorite was the Iris. The bedroom I slept in when I stayed the night was bright yellow and white and full of light. So, I called it the yellow flower room....haha! It sat right at the corner of both hallways. The air conditioning vents were in the ceiling and the whistle they made combined with the clicking and chiming of my grandpa John's clock on the mantle are what ALWAYS put me to sleep at night. I would always hear the clock chime at 6 am and shortly after that, I'd hear grandpa John roll out of bed and walk down the hallway towards the kitchen. I knew he was headed there because he always walked over a place in the hallway where the wood made a creaking sound. Then I'd hear him cough a few times. Then I'd hear the coffee brewing and then I'd SMELL the coffee. Oh, and just so you know, this is where my coffee addiction came from. Not every time, but sometimes I'd crawl out of bed and go sit by grandpa on the little padded stools they had sitting at the bar. He coined the phrase "coffee milk" (which was more like sugar milk with a smidge of coffee) and would ask me if I'd like some. Of course, I said yes. I always said yes because coffee milk was the bomb. At some point during this particular morning I'm remembering, he turned on Bozo the Clown. (Sooooooo 80's retro!!!) I wanted to play the grand prize game so badly that it hurt. I always told him that I wanted to play the grand prize game....lol. So he found a ping pong ball and a few random buckets and made my own and from that day on, we played it whenever we wanted to. There was no fancy game that he bought me at the store for a hundred dollars. He used a couple of fishing buckets, an empty butter container and a bucket that held ashes from the fireplace during the winter. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I remember thinking "all of that stuff was hiding in the SAME closet that Snickey Snake and Mister BEAN are living in!!!" haha. That's how I know for a fact that I was four. Snickey Snake and Mister Bean were as real as it got for me and I was just as happy, probably MORE happy, with a few run down items and a ping pong ball as my "grand prize game".
My memory ended there, but I have these memories all the time. I'm pretty sure I'm having them to remind me to stay grounded. To stay simple with the girls. Even though we have gadgets in our home, the girls don't "need" gadgets. They have all the gadgets they need outside in the back yard and all around us. I tested this the other day by giving Miss P and Miss G a couple of my wooden cooking spoons, two pots, one plastic mixing bowl and two spoons. Not even five minutes later, Miss P came to me with a foot in each pot, the bowl on her head, a wooden spoon in each hand and the spoon stuck to her nose. She was an "alien" from planet "Sophia". I don't even know what that means, but they both took turns wearing the "space helmet" and sliding around in "space shoes". Hopefully I am around for a long time, but if for some reason I'm not, I want both of my girls to have memories of me and our family like I have of my family. Not just my grandpa, but my entire family. Because they are the absolute best and I love that they are mine. =)
My memory ended there, but I have these memories all the time. I'm pretty sure I'm having them to remind me to stay grounded. To stay simple with the girls. Even though we have gadgets in our home, the girls don't "need" gadgets. They have all the gadgets they need outside in the back yard and all around us. I tested this the other day by giving Miss P and Miss G a couple of my wooden cooking spoons, two pots, one plastic mixing bowl and two spoons. Not even five minutes later, Miss P came to me with a foot in each pot, the bowl on her head, a wooden spoon in each hand and the spoon stuck to her nose. She was an "alien" from planet "Sophia". I don't even know what that means, but they both took turns wearing the "space helmet" and sliding around in "space shoes". Hopefully I am around for a long time, but if for some reason I'm not, I want both of my girls to have memories of me and our family like I have of my family. Not just my grandpa, but my entire family. Because they are the absolute best and I love that they are mine. =)
