Gift of Sunny Memories

Summer is my favorite time of year. Warm days, later sunsets and earlier sunrises all provide the canvas on which we can build days that are perfect for making memories. What are some of your favorite summertime memories?
 
For me, when I think all the way back to my childhood, I remember the simple things. Playing in the park a block away from our house as a kid, fishing for carp at the Ypsilanti Dam with my dad and two younger brothers, and playing softball with friends.
 
While I no longer live in my hometown, we get back there often in the summertime because we have a cabin nearby. Last weekend, it was a drizzly Saturday night, so we drove in from the lake for ice cream. I was feeling nostalgic, so we took a little detour, driving by the house I lived in during my grade school years.
 
The house hasn't changed much, other than the color, even though we moved away from there in the late '70s. It looks smaller now, and a huge, second garage sits on what was once the perfect baseball diamond in our backyard—perfect for little kids that is. My dad built the first garage. The memories are fuzzy, but I remember finding little treasures in the dirt when the grass was cut into strips of sod and rolled up to make way for the new building. I also remember that garage becoming the perfect setup for wicked games of anti-i-over!
 
Going back even further in my memories, I remember a terrifying drive away from that house in the dead of night, streetlights shining through the rain splattered car windows. Mom was very pregnant with my brother, which would have put me at just shy of three years old. The river, behind the houses across the street from us, was flooding. We needed to get out. Dad stayed behind. I'm told the water flooded our basement, reaching the top step, nearly touching our main living area. Dad had to knock in windows, maybe even part of one basement wall, so the pressure wouldn't collapse the whole structure. He saved our house while Mom drove our little family to safety.
 
To look at it now, you'd never know.
 
My old mini-van, now with over 200,000 miles on the odometer and reserved for easy trips like this, drove slowly down our old street and then rounded the corner toward Klaus Park. There, along a dense growth of trees and grasses, was a large doe, munching on tree leaves. She glanced our way, unconcerned, and went back to her dinner. It was such a peaceful scene on a damp Saturday evening in a quiet neighborhood.
 
I spent countless hours in that park growing up. There is a spot, in the back of Klaus park, where two rivers meet: the James River and the Pipestem River. For as long as I can remember, there's always been a bench there, where a person can sit and take time to enjoy the view. As so often happens in my writing, bits and pieces from my life find their way into my stories, and this bench is no exception. I had this very bench in mind during two different scenes in my third novel, and it was fun to stop to see it again and snap a few pictures.

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We continued on with our lazy drive through the park, no one else around on such a wet evening. Next stop for photo ops: the beautiful walking bridge spanning the river and the older playground equipment near the front of the park. I wonder how many times I walked across that bridge or rode my bike over it as a kid?
 
I couldn't help but compare the old playground equipment, the very ones I climbed, rode, bounced, and slid down on as a child, to the brightly colored, molded playground equipment of today. I'm a bit surprised no one has felt the need to rip the old equipment out due to "safety concerns." Personally, I'm glad they remain in the park. Not everything needs to be plastic and new.

​It felt a bit odd, being back in that old neighborhood we left so long ago. We moved when I started seventh grade, but I still have so many snippets of our days in that first house deep in my memories. And most of the memories are of times spent outside, in the summertime. There was a new flower garden in the corner of our yard. A swing set in the backyard and a big old tire wedged between some trees and filled with sand. We played in that sandbox for hours. I even remember a heavy, red canoe, propped up against the side of the house. We'd play around and under that old thing all the time but I don't ever remember it in the water.
 
Do you ever go back to your first home, even to just drive by it?
 
Our kids have only ever lived in one house. I can't help but wonder what they'll remember when they look back to their grade school days. We live on the river, and we've fought floods, but we've never had a basement full of water. There's a park at the end of our street now, too. The old playground equipment that was there when we first moved in has been pulled out, replaced by a more modern, very likely safer version. It's a wonderful setup, and little kids in our neighborhood are lucky to have it. They'll never experience the burn of sliding down a metal slide that's been heated by the summer sun, and that's a good thing, but still…
 
Home—it plays such an integral part in our lives. Home is also a critical component in my third novel, coming out next month. Maybe that's why I was feeling so nostalgic. Homes come in many different shapes and sizes. "Home" can be an apartment, a small house, or a large one, a simple or an elaborate dwelling. But a home is so much more than just a building. It isn't only a place. It's a feeling. It should be our safe place; somewhere to rest, and eat, and live, and love.
 
And since today is Father's Day, I wanted to give both my dad and my hubby a shout out for all you have both done in keeping a roof over our heads.  Thank you for helping provide homes for our family. For fixing, for saving, for building, and for maintaining the various places we've called home through the years. We couldn't do it without you.
 
And to all of you fathers out there: Happy Father's Day!   Kim