FRONT PORCH THOUGHTS

      

      I’m sitting on the porch on a lovely Sunday afternoon, thinking about what I have not yet made of these summer months that are quickly passing. Oh, I know—there is still the whole month of August. And yet, I have been around enough decades to be aware of how fast time goes when you’re not looking.

        I remember that as a kid in grade school, summer seemed like a long time. That’s probably because summers were always filled with a lot of things going on—long nights of playing hide-and-seek, swimming at the “Minnie Hole” as we called it, going to an amusement park (Clementon Lake Park, for those of you who may remember it) the boardwalk in Seaside, the beach on LBI, and a dozen or more other things.

       Now that I’m retired, I suppose I could retrace some of those steps, but it’s hard to get a group of adults together to play hide-and-seek. They are too “dignified” and “mature” even though down deep inside they would really love to do that. And I don’t know if anybody still swims at the Minnie Hole and most of the arcade games I use to play don’t exist anymore (replaced by high-tech electronics that confound me) and Sandy destroyed a lot of the things on the Seaside boardwalk or they have been updated to keep up with the times.

       Of course, it wouldn’t be the same anyway, and that’s as it should be. As Bob Dylan has sung “the times, they are achangin’.”

       This leads me to say that changes have always been a reality in the history of humankind whether anybody wants them or not. And let’s face it: some of them are pretty darned good! I don’t want to have to go down to the river and wash clothes and beat them against a rock or try to read by dim candlelight or have to go into town riding in a horse and wagon or go the well to draw water for drinking and bathing every day.

       But what is it in the human psyche that longs for days gone by? Our days gone by, that is. It might be the fact that certain memories are a gift. They represent the authenticity of joy. They validate the appreciation of the people we have had in our lives. They remind us of the fact that life hasn’t all been about politics or bills to pay or running a household. It has also been about times of carefree pleasures of the moment. And the truth is, whether we're aware of it or not, we are making new memories that are just as much a  treasure in these days we are living right now.

Just a thought. 

(I will not be posting for 3 weeks due to the fact that we will be in Europe until the middle of August)