I Wanna Go Back

My oldest daughter, Annie, just started middle school (or junior high, as it was called where I grew up) and it led to so many emotions as well as memories of when I was in junior high. Then, as if she read my mind, a former classmate and friend posted a picture of a wing of our old junior high school building on Facebook.

And it was like it opened a door in my soul that had been closed so long ago.

 

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 A flood of emotions and feelings came to me so fast that it actually literally took my breath away. I searched the picture for what seemed like minutes looking for any trace of something familiar.

 My childhood, maybe?

 My innocence?

 A time when life was ever so simple?

Then later that day while cleaning up the dinner mess after a typically long day in which my husband was slaving away at work and leaving me to my 14 hour lonely shift with my girls, my mind wandered back to the "red brick building" as it was called and as it still is called, apparently.

 My heart ached to be back there. To be in that building with its wonderful smells and comforting creaking floors. I wanted to be sitting in Mrs. Donnamiller's English class, not really listening but gazing out the window wondering what my future held, wondering if Billy Cooney was going to ask me to the dance (he never did...boo him!), wishing for a pair of purple Nike's that I absolutely had to have (I did get them....yay mom and dad!) and pondering what my mom would be making that night for dinner (it was always something good and I can guarantee cheese was involved).

 

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Don't get me wrong, I love my hubs and kids and our life we are carving out but there are days.....you know those days. When the laundry seems to never end, when you get rained on while carrying five bags of school supplies into your daughter's school, when you have back to back appointments and the four year old decides that going pee in her pants is a better option than using the bathroom five feet away. Its those days that make me wanna go back to junior high.



When boys were still icky and my girlfriends were my universe.

Where I could be in my childhood home, of which I can never again visit. If I had known back then that I would never again see this home, I would have touched the walls more, sat and stared out my bedroom window looking at the "little woods" behind our home more and I would have inhaled its smell a little longer.

Where I can still smell my mom burning cinnamon and other spices on the stove.

Where I can still hear my mama and gramma talking at the kitchen table. Oh how I yearn for their voices.

Where I can hear my dad's radio in the garage playing Fleetwood Mac as he organizes his tools and see my little brother riding his bmx bike in the yard.

Where I can lay on the couch with my dog, Fancy, and bury my face in her little furry head.

Where I can sit on my canopy bed and talk to God.

Where I can walk down the street to hang out with my childhood bff Wendy and read Young Miss magazine and eat mass quantities of everything bad for you. And you didn't have to pencil it on the calendar. You just hung.out.

Where I can sit on my mama's bed with my head on her lap and cry about Billy Cooney not asking me to the dance. Hey, he was my first real crush. Or about how I am failing Math. Probably more about the second one than the first.


Sometimes I wish I lived where I grew up.
So my kids could walk the same halls I did at their age.
So I can relive my childhood through them.
So I can provide them with those wonderful small town memories.


But I know they are making their own memories here. I just hope I am providing them with the same  happy memories I had. I hope I am making their childhood a cozy and warm place to be like my mama and gramma did for me.

Did I ever tell you that I grew up with my gramma living with us my entire childhood into adulthood? Best. Experience. Ever.

I hope I am making it special for my girls. So that someday they say to me......I wanna go back.