Thursday, 26 August 2010
Sensory Summers
By Lyn Burnstine of The Lynamber Times
My friend writes to me that summers were longer when he was a kid. I remember the long, hot days of Illinois summers with all my senses: riding my bike lazily past miles of cornfields on deserted dirt roads; wandering the meadows, barefoot, searching for wildflowers to weave into garlands - clover and daisies to braid into crowns, and dandelion stems to circle into chains; and wading in the squishy mud after the quick, heat-breaking cloudbursts.
I remember gathering armfuls of lush pink and blue blossoms from Blue Bell Island with my gentle nature-loving parents; swinging on Tarzan grapevines in the deep cool woods; finding musky wild honey in a fallen tree; and playing in an old abandoned pig-sty in those woods.
I remember squealing at the crawdads crawling over my toes in the welcoming crystal-cool “crick”; climbing into the hayloft to jump on the heaps of sweet-smelling prickly hay; creeping quietly in the dusk to spot the elusive whippoorwill hunkered down on its ground nest.
I remember stuffing my mouth with juicy, sun-drenched dewberries, raspberries, blackberries and wild cherries; gathering baskets of buttery hickory nuts, hazelnuts and black walnuts; eating two big bowls of soft, homemade peach ice cream - Sunday’s treat - made rich with our own real cream; lying in the pasture with my cheek pressed against the broad sweet-grass-scented side of the giver of that thick cream.
I remember playing with and feeding all the other tamed farm animals - cats, cows, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits - and the sometimes-found turtles and baby mice; curling up under a big shade tree to read all through the long, hot afternoon with the redolence of newmown grass and the summer music of birds and cicadas for company.
I remember singing hymns lustily in Golden Church, the little rural church that forever shaped my musical and spiritual life; and I remember climbing to the top of my favorite low-branched persimmon tree, where I played my ocarina and surveyed the blessed world of my childhood - one of complete connection to nature through all my senses.
[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]
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Comments
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Lyn - Beautifully written! Wonderfully portrayed memories of a bucolic childhood. - Sandy
Posted by: Sandy | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 07:41 AM
When I see your name on the Story Telling Place notice I know I am in for a treat. You never fail to please.
What a beautiful picture you painted of a farm child's lazy summer. I could almost smell the newmown grass.
Posted by: Darlene | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 08:40 AM
Thank you both. It WAS bucolic, and I am more and more grateful the older I get. I am holding back some essays until I get a better scanner--with a photographer for a father, we have my childhood well recorded on film!
Posted by: Lyn Burnstine | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 11:02 AM
Lyn, as usual you've given us a beautifully told memory. You do, indeed, paint a picture with words.
Posted by: Marcia Mayo | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 12:40 PM
Lyn,
What a treat to read your memories today. I love to read about other people's lives because most of them are so different from my own memories of childhood in the city..
Wonderful images.Beautifully written.
Posted by: Nancy | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 01:09 PM
Thank you, later posters. You inspired me to write up a long-ago rural adventure that I've often spoken of, but never immortalized on paper--My Life as a Shepherdess. Watch for it here--as soon as I get the photograph ready!
Posted by: Lyn Burnstine | Thursday, 26 August 2010 at 08:38 PM
Wonderful descriptions!
Posted by: Mary B Summerlin | Friday, 27 August 2010 at 12:40 PM