I Miss My Childhood

Day 12: What do you miss?

Looking through all my old photos for some of my recent posts has made me miss the carefree days of my childhood, especially in the summer time. When the days would last for what seemed like forever. When my sisters and I would play outdoors from sunrise to sunset.

We would start our days by making some cinnamon and sugar toast, making an extra slice to give to our dog, Taffy. We would sit on the front steps, eating our toast, sharing with Taffy and watch the world wake up. We might then ride our bikes for a bit. We had a pretty big driveway, but we much preferred to ride our bikes around the berry fields that surrounded our house. We could ride for hours down dirt roads, dodging berry pickers and pick-ups, stopping to eat as many strawberries, raspberries and blueberries as we could stuff in our tiny faces. We would race around the pond, seeing who could make a lap in the fastest time. We would peddle our little banana seat bikes as fast as could, trying to beat each other down the path.

We might play make-believe in the tree house for a bit. Our dress up bin was full of anything and everything we needed to be pioneers (just like Laura Ingalls Wilder), or Indians, or Royalty in our Tree house Castle. We would grow little "gardens" in our sandbox by burying rocks in little, neat rows with twigs to mark the rows. We would play rescue rangers by throwing all of Julie's stuffed animals out her second story bedroom window.  Then we toss an an Easter basket with jump ropes tied together out the bed room window, Julie would fill up the baskets with animals needing rescuing and we would pull them to safety, bunching up the side of the house. Mom said she heard a bunch of noise and looked out the bathroom window, in time to see a basket with a bear and a gorilla in it go past, on it's way up the side of the house.

We would put dish soap on the trampoline, put the sprinkler underneath and turn it on for our slip and slide, with bounce. I don't how we didn't break every bone in our bodies. We played three person games of baseball, basketball, and anything else we could think of. We would act out our favorite movies and make up dances to our favorite songs.

We would stay out as late as we could and often negotiated running through the sprinkler in exchange for taking a bath. We would lay in our beds as the sun drifted below the horizon listening to mom read us a story while we imaged how we would make-believe the very same scenes the next day.

These were the days of my childhood. These are the carefree days I miss.