My Yesterdays

It is damned hot. That humid kind of heat that seems to suck the life right out of you. 

So I hover over the thermostat to see if I can keep the electric bill down. I get out early and water the plants. And otherwise I rarely step out into weather that feels like heat from an oven.

The flowers are literally dying on the vine. They just seem to peter out this time of year. The cone flowers are showing their pretty faces while most of the others just give up.

So those of you who were jealous in the spring when I was showing pretty flower blooms, you can rest assured that now it's your turn and my blooms have pretty much fizzled out.

Now's when I drink iced tea, take a vacation from all variety of soups and mostly eat cold sandwiches. 

Somehow I can't remember the intense heat when I was a youngster. We didn't have any form of air conditioning either.

Those were the days when you saw people listlessly waving a paper fan in the all but futile hope of getting a slight break from the endless heat. 

I doubt most would remember those paper fans women carried around back then.  

Women fanning themselves in church as the clock ticked on, faces slick from sweat. With no way of knowing when the preacher would be done and they could finally slip out into the hope of a breeze.

I was never one to be able to sit still long. So in church my mind wandered as the preacher got more and more worked up. 

As a child, I was mostly jolted by that loud booming voice and red face, and how very angry he sounded. 

I remember thinking when I was old enough, I would no longer be setting in church pews while some preacher worked himself into a dither. Because I didn't like the loudness. And I really didn't believe in hell fire and damnation anyway. 

I was a pragmatic sort, even as a small child. 

There is something to be said for growing up in the sixties and seventies. Life overall was just a whole lot less complicated. 

I sometimes think I remember sounds from way back then. The night sounds particularly. 

Like the almost melancholy sound of a train as it blew through town while I was trying to fall asleep. I wondered where it came from and where it might be going as it clattered down the tracks and on out of town. 

I remember the crickets. The sound of the rooster crowing at daybreak. 

I remember how warm the nest was while I gently lifted a hen to gather her eggs. How my being in the hen house stirred up little tiny feathers that floated and danced in the air. And the chickens squawked at me till I left and shut the door.

All these disjointed memories come back to me occasionally. Thin little slices of life from way back when. Strung together like beads on a necklace.

How some sounds and smells can make you feel happy. And others send you, for whatever reason, into a bit of sadness. 

And you don't remember why or from where the memory surfaces. 

Kind of like when you see a fish as it sluices through dark lake water. Shiny gills flash like diamonds before it dives down deep again. And you have to wonder if you ever really saw it at all.

Regardless, memories are what we have of yesterday. And of course tomorrow is a surprise that hasn't happened yet. 

"My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step. They are gray faces that peer over my shoulder..."  - William Golding