What I Miss..

"With rue my heart is laden

for golden friends I had

for many a rose-lipt maiden

and many a lightfoot lad..."

This morning while lying in the meadow at Bryan Park I looked up at the sky and the numerous cumulous clouds and had a memory from childhood. A memory of myself as a small child with my parents lying on our backs looking at clouds and imagining shapes. An early summer day in 1967. And then I began to think about all of the things I miss from those golden years.

I miss "April showers bring May flowers," rainy, wet spring days that I thought would never end, I miss summer coming when summer is supposed to and cool Septembers that kept us indoors early. I miss summers in Puerto Rico and my mother's family. I miss sitting on a porch or patio in the late afternoon heat with my bare feet on cool tile and fresh made limeade to drink and all of my relatives talking in spanish, telling stories and dirty jokes and the laughter. I miss their laughter and their faces. I miss the crazy cocktail parties my parents had and the shimmery tank jump suits my mother would make before each one. I miss the games they played like pass the key down the shirt, dancing to the Tijuana Brass and drinking Whiskey Sours in our very small apartment in Meadowdale. I miss their international set of friends (cubans, argentinians, etc) that came from out of town just because they loved the parties that my parents threw. I miss loading up the car with picnic items and going for a sunday drive, just because that's what everyone did back then. I miss classic cars with roll down windows and that little extra window in the shape of a triangle that pushed out. I miss making kites and flying kites on windy spring days. I miss sitting in the grass looking for four leaf clovers and making crowns from strung together clover flowers. I miss being barefoot all summer. I miss my mother tossing me out in the rain so I could play and get wet. I miss riding my bike with the banana seat and sissy bar in the back. I miss running in the woods, playing pioneers, making forts, crab apple fights and sitting in trees. I miss the smell of my mother making fried pork chops and homemade french fries; the sound of my mother calling us in to eat every day at four thirty. I miss the sound of a screen door slamming and the crazy sing song tunes from the ice cream truck, and hanging out all day at the pool with what seemed like a million laughing, screaming kids.  I miss how everyone thought my mother was the most beautiful, glamorous woman at the pool - an Elizabeth Taylor look alike - she was. I miss playing freeze tag, kick the can and hide and seek on summer nights. I miss drive in movies; watching them in my pjs, the smell of popcorn and sweet grass wafting in the air. I miss softball season, afternoon practice, fielding an amazing play, the sting of the ball in my mitt. I miss Loretta, Carrie, Karie, Brenda and coach Wally Smith shouting, "Campbell did you eat your vitamins today?" I miss summer crushes and driving in souped up Mustangs and convertibles and making out to Rod Stewarts' "Tonight's the Night.." behind Beulah Elementary School with my boyfriend Scott. I miss the way he looked in his baseball uniform, football uniform; I miss riding beside him in his little TR7. I miss gardening with BB and Kathy Gun and rolling around like a dog in the fresh turned soil just before planting. I miss wide open spaces, winding country roads and the sound of frogs and crickets filling the night air; the smell of honeysuckle, fire flies filling the dark night and picking blackberries on undeveloped lots.  I miss Richmond before development came and destroyed the natural beauty and became the suburbs; before Midlothian Turnpike, before Stony Point, before Short Pump, before mile upon mile of shopping malls filled with grocery chains, retail chains, home improvement stores, gas stations, movie complexes, etc, etc, and on and on. And all of these things will fall into decay and the grass will shoot through the pavement and the trees will grow and someday it will all revert back to its natural beauty. And I will be gone.

I could fill page upon page of all the people, things and places I miss but for now I will just say -

I miss it all.