Things I Have Lost Somewhere Somehow Along The Way
Today I am sitting in the Adirondack chair on my front porch drinking a glass of lemonade listening to Gladys Knight sing, "The Way We Were."That girl has pipes.This hasgiven me time toponder about life and the things I have lost somehow somewhere along the way.Memory is an entity composed of a hundred thousand mosaic tiles, a hundred thousand incidents and events yet they are gathered together in a single mass a single, unquestioned thing.It composes the stained glass window of my life.Memories rise and fall like the chest of the sleeping giant who is resting after chasing Jack down the beanstalk.
Where does time go?It seems just last year I was beginning my career with two very young daughters pillaging and plundering about the house.Now they are middle age.Sometimes I swim in lake memory.When I return to the shore and shake like a golden retriever, memories fly about like diamond chips in the crisp air glowing like sparks from the anvil at the blacksmith's shop.Most sputter and quickly die while others cause the fires of yesteryear to glow and warm me.
What has happened to all of those plans and dreams once held so dear but now sit on a shelf in the back closet with the dust mop and ironing board gathering dust.They are as lost as a golf ball in a field of kudzu in southern Mississippi.
I remember listening to the wind and sitting still in the summer night gazing at the stars and planets.It was a more peaceful time.I spent many years worshipping with small town or country churches and listening to the singing.The voices were old and cracked and untrained.But they sang from the heart and buoyed my soul to the heavens.I miss them.
I used to stand at night and gaze and wonder at the moon and stars.Astronauts have gone to the moonand we have mountains of information about it and its mysticism has diminished in my life.Living in the suburbs deprives me of that opportunity.There is so much ambient light stars disappear.Lying on my back in the yard out in the country as a youth stars were so close I could almost reach up and touch them.I miss that.
People from my past have faded into the mists of time.People who I knew quite well and many were my relatives but it is difficult for me to rummage about in the closet of my mind today and remember what they looked like.Time erases memories and faces.
If I had the chance to do it all again, would I?Would we, could we?Yes, but not in the way I did it the first time.Hurricane force winds would roar through my mind and lifesweeping things out and depositing others.If you wouldn't change perhaps you have encountered Stupefying Jones of Li'l Abner.
There are so many things I would change in my life and I would start by lassoing many of those things that I have lost somehow, somewhere along the way.
Larry Vandeventer.
Go to my website -- Larryvandeventer.com -- and purchase my books.I grew up North of Calvertville and Graduated from Worthington High School and Indiana State 4 Times.Contact me at Goosecrick@aol.com or 317-839-7656.
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