Your Favorite Childhood Memory

[Soft*Silver]

I remember lilacs...bundles and bundles of them on a gigantic bush in the front of our house. It was a good 15 feet tall and about 10 feet wide and it blossomed profusely every spring. I would go and gather my mother gazillions of them and she would put them in a canning jar and put them on the table. I would sit under the lilac bush and play with my cats and dogs. To this day, when mom is around (she has been gone since 1996) it is her scent that allows me to know she is peaking in.

I also remember gathering dandelions and hawkweed...I just thought hawkweed was the most beautiful flower! And collecting clover buds and making chains of them for head bands and necklaces...

I was such a child of nature..I spent most of my time out of doors, up inside trees or under their branches. My feet were covered in mud and dirt. There is NO better pleasure as a child, on this earth, than to squeeze mud thru your toes!

Firefly jars...caccoons...blue butterflies...lady bug lady bug fly away home..first star out tonight...

oh...I am pining for the days I had when i had so many days....

[NJFemmie]

For many years, my brother used to take us to a lake every Sunday in the summer months. Me and my two oldest nephews (who were relatively close in age) - would wander around the grounds looking for some sort of trouble to get into. It was a big lake - they held concerts at night, had concession stands - it was more like a very toned down theme park.

I was a massive tomboy as a child - and would always find a way to get myself dirty. During one trip - I was wearing a pair of brand new red shorts my mother bought for me - and I wasn't supposed to be wearing them until later that evening (aka clothes change). Well, despite my mother's warnings, I wore them, and I was determined not to get dirty this time around. I was looking sharp and I was planning on staying that way. I promised her.

Well.. as fate would have it - we (my nephews and I) - were walking on rocks along a stream ... minding our own business, not looking for trouble (for a change) and low and behold I take a slide on some mud and land ass first on a huge muddy rock.

I was so pissed. My day was shot and so were my shorts. I made my nephews walk behind me shielding my ass because I was embarrassed that I had an inch thick of mud back there. EVERYONE will know I took an ass dive. Oh, the tragedy.

I can still hear my mother "you can't keep anything clean can you...? I told you not to wear those shorts ... " *sigh* I was never sure she believed I didn't do it on purpose.

I still laugh at the picture in my head of me slipping on that rock. It was slow-motion, both feet in the air, BOOM I'm on my ass and mud everywhere.
It wasn't funny then, but it's worth a good chuckle for me now.

[Lynn]

When I was about four or five, I remember going to synagogue with my grandfather one morning, probably a Saturday morning. We walked all the way, and then I sat with him on the men's side of the orthodox sanctuary. We stood up and sat down as the service went on, according to the prayers and traditions. The whole service was in Hebrew, and the prayers, chanted mostly aloud, but quietly, to themselves, sounded like sing-song mumbling. After a bit, I decided that there was nothing to it, so I started chanting along, quietly mumbling gibberish to myself, like everyone else. You should have seen how proud my grandfather was!