Passages Back in Time

Lately, I find myself musing with memories from my past.  Not my recent past, but my distant past.  Things that I thought were long lost.  Maybe it's a sign of age.  I hope so.  I hope that the road into old age also turns out to be a passageway back in time.  This morning I made Ice Box Pudding.  My family will know what this it.  It's a delectable, coveted desert from our childhood.  An old family recipe passed down through the generations.  Whenever we get together, it seems that Ice Box Pudding becomes a topic of conversation.  There is much discussion as to how delicious it is and how much work it is to make it.  Mom, and Dad in later years, were both proficient at its creation.  Some of us, me and Julie to be precise, take it as a personal challenge to perfect the art of Ice Box Pudding creation.  This desert is not "made".  You wouldn't say the Mona Lisa was "made".  This desert is a work of art and is therefore, "created".  As I stand in my kitchen, counter tops covered  by bowls and mixers and pots and pans, surrounded by the ingredients, and carefully assembling them, I feel my mother standing next to me.  It's strange how making this desert brings her immediately into my thoughts.  With her comes a wave of childhood moments that wash over me as clear as if they had just taken place.  I close my eyes and I see my brother, Joe, a gangley teenager with big ears and a goofy grin on his face.  He's sitting at our little kitchen table with his feet up on the rim and rocking his chair on two legs.  My brother, Rick, just a few years older than Joe, but not at all gangley.  Rick has a charming smile with mischievous, but warm, brown eyes that make you feel safe and at ease when you look in to them.  They are our mother's eyes, though Rick pretends to hate it when people tell him that.  I think, though he might not admit it, that he loves her the most.  My sister, Julie, they say I resemble her although she is my senior by 11 years.  She is Rick's senior by only 11 months, but she likes to mother us all.  This is a wonderful, if unappreciated at the time, gift that will follow her through life and serve to make her about the best grandmother on the planet.  In my memories, however, she is young with thick blond hair and a gold tooth.  (No, due to a dental injury, it really is a gold tooth.)  As much trouble as we liked to give her for her incessant mothering, it was then, and is now, comforting to know that she is there.  My sister, Kay, is a beautiful red head.  She is the spitting image of our mother.  Big, chocolate brown eyes, rosy cheeks and a dimpled smile.  Kay is over 20 years my senior.  Growing up, most of my memories of her are closer to a second mother than a sister.  She was married and in her own home before I was born.  I have wonderful memories of sitting in the glowing kitchen in the old farmhouse, a house I had the privilege of raising my own children in.  She has a daughter the same age as me and we grew up like twins.  She would serve us treats as we sat at the little picnic style table for the children that sat in the corner of the kitchen.  How many children are blessed with one wonderful mother, let alone two.  My brother, Larry, was tall with black hair and those same wonderful brown eyes.  He was nearly a man when I was born.  I remember when he was on his mission for the LDS church in England.  He became in my mind, a knight, or maybe one of Robin Hood's merry men.  I remember that when he came home, he brought me some candy from England.  Now, in my clouded memory, it was a pink, feminine leg made of sugar.  Somehow, I don't think this memory is completely correct, but I choose to keep it anyway because it is so attached to my brother Larry.  My father was such a quiet man.  I don't think in my entire life I ever heard him raise his voice.  That's not to say he was withdrawn by any means.  My favorite memory of my blue-eyed father, was when he would sit on the couch in the evening, reading the paper or watching TV and my sister, Sally, and I would sit on the back of the couch behind him and put his hair, what there was of it, into pin curls.  I'm not sure how much success we ever had because Dad wore a flat top haircut, but we certainly had fun trying.  Sometimes, out of the blue, Dad would hop on all fours on the floor and play "donkey" with us.  He would hee haw like a donkey and kick his back feet up in the air while we danced around, attempting to avoid them and squealing at the top of our lungs.  Ah, my sister Sally.  She and I were the closest in age, and therefore the closest of friends.  Let me rephrase that.  We are now the closest of friends.  Back then, it somehow seemed essential that we pretend to dislike each other.  Slap fights were a daily occurrence.  There was the masking tape on the floor of our bedroom, dividing it into yours and mine.  There were borrowed shoes and trading of clothes.  Sally, she was also blessed with Mother's delicious chocolate eyes, and she had warm olive skin that turned brown in the summer, whereas my skin burned and freckled all summer long.  I was the epitome of our Scandinavian ancestors with my golden blond hair, blue eyes, and tree trunk, ankle less legs.

I love that these memories have returned to my brain so clear and fresh.  I lived a fairy tale childhood.  My Father was a king, my mother a queen, and my brothers and sisters were all knights and ladies.  If only every child could be brought up as glorious as I was.  If only I could remember to be more grateful for such a precious blessing.