Carrol Vertrees: Chilhood days go on and on — only in our memories

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Carrol Vertrees

Updated: October 15, 2011 6:56PM

It was only a small bowl of oyster soup, but it made our dinner for two special. The aroma awakened a sleeping memory that took me back to life on the farm — a long time ago. There were pearls in those oysters! Memory gems.

Our clan often gathered in winter in our big farmhouse, where the women created kettles of oyster soup — a mundane thing, perhaps, but to us it was a respite from the rigors of hard times.

The aroma penetrated every cranny of that big house, and it lingered for days.

In my memory it still lingers, a link to my beginning. We all need such links. That little steaming bowl served by Mrs. V warmed more than my stomach — it went straight to my heart, taking me back through the years.

The memory thing touched me again when our California daughter, a musical person, sent some lyrics she wrote about childhood. Every generation has it special settings, its own memorable fun times.

I like these lines: “What if we’d known then what we know now. Life got so complicated somehow ... ”

That is why we need simple memories. We would be lost without them.

She catches the spirit of remembering with this:

“Tangled in string as we tried to fly a kite,

Flickering lightning bugs on a summer night

Oh, and the sweet scent of just mowed lawns

And playing croquet until the porch lights came on,

Those childhood days — come and gone.”

She writes that “We thought those days would go on and on.” That is what we say, even as we know it is an impossible dream. Yet we need those dreams. Some of the fun memories may help us in our dwindling days to light a candle in the darkness of despair or loneliness.

It may not be the specific event that touches us in our memory trips. Maybe it is just the nice setting, the circumstances, the memory of being comfortable, before “life got so complicated somehow.”

A carry-in dinner on a rural church lawn under a big tree may sound mundane, but generations ago, it was a neighborhood triumph — we kids were in dessert heaven, a suitable word, there near the little old church where we heard so may amens and long sermons.

Years later, we became Methodists by merger, not by choice, although it has been a pleasant experience. Now, we call those dinners potlucks, but I don’t care much about the name — we Methodists smugly claim that ours are the best, by any name. Every time I go back for more dessert, I remember those days on the church yard marked now by only a plaque, and I am a kid again, wondering if my mom is watching. I know the answer to that, and I grin.

There is a similarity maybe in our memories, even as they seem to be unique. Some memories are private, ours alone — they stand unshakable, giving us comfort. They may touch us in the aroma of oyster soup, or the sweet bliss of a warm apple pie, the sound of a hymn, an endearing word from someone we admire, a friendly smile, a rainbow.

Life does get complicated. We do need the healing touch of memories, locked in our minds, ready to appear when the time is right. Memories that we can sing about.