MEMORIES

MEMORIES

Backward, turn backward, oh Time in in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight

Elizabeth Akers Allen: Rock Me to Sleep

Both of my books, Letters to My Sister and Letters to My Sister: Chew Street and Beyond, grew out of a fanciful notion to take my sister on a literary trip down memory lane as a birthday gift.

I would write my impressions of memories that we shared growing up and present her with the stories. Piece of cake, I figured.

However, it soon became apparent when I began writing, that it would not be a piece of cake.

Fortunately, I have a darned good memory.  As the eldest child of four, I could put my own particular stamp on recollections of those halcyon days.

Oh, I had no trouble remembering, but staying on topic was an issue.  I was all over the place. You know how you start remembering certain events and then your mind begins to wander and wander and pretty soon you are in another place entirely.  Simply put, I lacked discipline.

Remembering a walk to our playground also made me recall trips on a trolley car to shop uptown which made me recall a first trip to Woolworth’s which made me recall how I lost a dolly there which … well you see how reminiscing goes.

As a new writer, I needed to figure it out PDQ.  Also, I needed to balance these nostalgic journeys with a healthy dose of humor, or the stories might become oversentimental.  It wasn’t always an easy task.  Recalling my parents, aunts and uncles, old friends, now all gone, on my daily forays into the past was often emotionally exhausting.

But I came to realize that this is what nostalgia is at its core; an intense longing for the past.  And it’s fine to reminisce occasionally.  To recall happy, golden times. To remember those we knew – and loved.

The stories I have written are nostalgic and sentimental and funny. And, some are a bit sad. Nostalgia notwithstanding, not everything in our past is golden.

If that were so, how could we ever understand the blissfulness of joy had we never tasted despair?

I’m sure many of us have often longed to be a child again, if only for a night.

Come with me then, on a walk down memory lane. Perhaps my stories will evoke your own golden rimmed memories.

Janice Monahan Rodgers