About Life, Love, And Living
Some believe that we choose our memories and select the ones that make us feel good maybe to bring back feelings of love and comfort. I confess to having many memories that fit into that mode. A spring walk with my dogs in tow or the smell of pancakes and bacon on a cold morning are among my favorites. It is natural to want to feel good and yet are those memories the ones that made me who I am?
I wonder if the hard times helped me find my place in life. I remember the year that the crops failed and we lost everything. We loaded up a big truck with everything we had and boarded up the doors and windows. Without looking back, we drove away after years of living on the farm. In the end, the hardest thing we did became a blessing when Daddy got a good job in town and we lived two blocks from the beach.
I felt like we had dropped down a bottomless hole like the ones you find deep in the forest. To make it worse my first day at my new school was very brutal. It seemed that city kids did not care much for farm kids. It was an awakening, yet I made my way around it. I made new friends and learned to stand my ground with the ones that refused to see me as an acceptable friend.
The hard times seemed to make me kinder and slowly the good memories came. Daddy called it a patch of rough road and told me to walk slower and keep going forward. He always seemed to know what to say and one day while riding my bike down to the saltmarshes I realized that I did feel good and I was happy and the rough patch had passed.
I have so many memories and they are all important with many lessons learned attached to them.
I find now that in many ways I have had a long life and my memories have gone full circle bringing back to me the cherished ones. I stroll often down the dirt roads, walking my dogs and spending most of my time with family. I still like to sit quietly in my garden remembering a life filled with the good memories. I know my life had many hard times, yet these memories I would prefer to forget and I would be happy for them to live in the shadows on the edge of my thoughts.
Perhaps I do choose certain memories and I guess that is okay. If I had my life to live over, I truly would not do anything different. So, come walk with me a while down an old country road and I will share a story with you about some good times, the best of times, and maybe you will have one or two to share with me.
Blessings Larry, I believe memories good or bad make a difference in our life and who we become as a result over time. I enjoyed your article and reading the last paragraph to come walk along on this old country road, I very few good memories, especially as a child, and many, many bad memories. But as you stated in your piece, despite all the bad and painful memories, I wouldn’t change a thing because I can see how being who I am today is a blessing to many. Thank you for your continue writing submissions.
Yes, Larry, we all like to feel good and those happy memories can often lift our spirits when things look bleak. But, the memories that are less happy define us and who we are. The lessons we learned, the stiffening of our spririt and resolve. We may not like to dwell on them, but we should never forget them. Thanks for the article.