Jeff, Caleb and Jonah are at football practice. Graci and Levi were playing in my room. Dinner was ready but instead of calling them to dinner I decided to sit down and eat all by myself. It was strangely quiet, but wonderful. Do you ever smell something and it take your mind down memory lane? It happens to me all the time. This time it was the smell of butter melting on fresh steamed corn on the cob, tomatoes grown in my Daddy's garden and steamed asparagus.

It made me remember summer as an 8 year old. Riding horses all day long, swimming in the creek, swinging on the old rope that swung out over the dirt road, walking with Lori up to the Stone Mountain Airport to play "soldier" while on the airplane wings, fighting an unseen battle. I remember working in the garden, hating it and loving it at the same time. I remember fishing in the pond, playing golf with Uncle Charlie while he tried to talk us into pursuing a career in golf, "It's where the money is", he'd say… walking through the trail in the woods next to our house, picking muscodines off the vine then taking them to Daddy knowing he would tell us some long drawn out story about when he was a kid and would pick muscodines hanging from a cliff with nothing to pick them with except his teeth… I loved his stories. Then, after a full day of action-packed play we would go home and smell supper cooking, fresh bread in the oven, vegetables cooking on the stove, the sound of Mom putting the ice in the glasses for the tea (that meant supper was really close to being ready). We'd eat and watch Andy Griffith on the TV and laugh. Man that was a great time in my life. All that came to my mind just by the smell of corn on the cob.

I just hope and pray that when my kids are my age they will smell their childhood with the same wonder and appreciation that I do.

7/25/01