Making Memories

It’s that first winter breeze that brings back so many memories. There’s a special smell that makes me want to breath deeper, reminisce longer, and just slow down. Maybe it’s that sip of the first hot chocolate with the kids, the sound of raking leaves, or getting the firewood ready before the first snow. I moved out of the house a few decades ago but I can remember sitting around the dining room table playing board games with my sister, smelling the turkey my mother was taking out of the oven, with nothing more than the sound of that slow jazz my dad would turn on mixed with the crackle of the fireplace.

Life seemed to move quite a bit slower back when I was a kid. It took a decade between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember riding my bike all over the neighborhood. I was a bit young for this before we moved but there was a small pond where the kids would fish before sundown and skate on in January. The poor last lady on the end of the street would get the first phone call from some kid’s mother. She would yell off that patio for Tommy, or whomever, to get home. And soon we would all scatter back somehow.

I wonder if the memories that my kids have will be reminisced of in about 35 years? I took 2 out of my 3 boys to a resort to fish, play board games to midnight (which I surprisingly lost again) and just relax. I hope my kids captured the moment together. It was just a weekend to get away from the wifi (not because there wasn’t any but because I didn’t want them to have it), get away from the video games, and just bond. Hopefully, they will remember the stick we fished out of the river pretending to be a huge alligator gar. And remember a time when riding a bike further than the end of a driveway.

~Brian Sparks