Childhood memories....

My parents divorced when I was 5 and I mostly got to visit my father on the weekends and holidays.  My brother & I usually stayed most of our school vacations with him and most of the summer.  I miss his old house so much, especially this time of the year.  It was in Fincastle and down a long dirt road.  It was placed on a huge farm, complete with barns, silos, an old grave yard, pond, etc.  This place was old but completely magical.  The front had a field that presented some of the most stunning sunsets.  The trees were huge and bold, surrounding the house.  There was a patch of yard off the front porch that produced hundreds of four leaf clovers over the years.  I can recall sitting in the cool grass in the summer heat filtering them out one by one.  There were irises that surrounded the house and in spring, the smell was so sweet in the warm air. I still have some of the bulbs from those irises and it instantly takes me back there when I smell them now. There was hammock in the back yard, and a small, wild strawberry patch under it.  There were wild rose bushes, apple trees, and the dirt in the driveway was so fine, more so than even baby powder, it nearly disintegrated when you rubbed it between your fingers. 

When we were kids, my dad had an old orange Jeep that we used for romping around on the property.  We would drive around in the woods in the winter until we found the tree that would be our twinkling Christmas idol for that season.  It was so much fun, such an adventure, that I will never forget and it's one of those occasions that if I could go back in time, it's one I would do again in a heart beat.

It was such a beautiful landscape, especially when it snowed.  My dad loved taking pictures and when it would snow we would all wrap up and venture off while he took pictures of what had been created for us to enjoy.  It just doesn't seem to snow like it used to back then, nothing is as it was back then.  It remember feeling like we were in our own world there, it was safe and fun and it's heart breaking to think that place is no longer there.  Thankfully we have pictures and memories and I can close my eyes and see every picture on the wall, feel every creak of the floor beneath my feet, feel the smoothness of the handrail at the stairs, and can still smell the fire burning in the stove.  That place was old but magical, it was home, like no other home I have ever known since.