Nostalgia

by Lucy M. Young

September with its various activities was my favorite month:
Going back to school with eagerness, anticipation and a little trepidation;
The smell of books and chalks and pencils;
Goldenrod along the roadsides;
Warm delightful days and cool crisp nights;
Stopping on the way from school at the potato field
Where father had been working all day long
Digging the winter store of white potatoes,
While the waiting horses stamped and neighed,
Impatient for their warm dry stalls
And their nightly ration of water, oats and hay;
Riding home on a lumpy wagon load of bagged potatoes;
Listening as they rolled and tumbled, rumbling into the waiting bin
       beneath the cellar window;
Gathering apples red-cheeked, crisp and juicy
To eat with popcorn on long winter evenings while mother read aloud
       our favorite books;
Bringing succulent plums - yellow, red and blue,
To mother to preserve for winter use;

Stepping from the chilly air into the steamy, lamplit kitchen
Redolent with the spicy smell of pickles simmering on the
       old black iron woodstove.
For supper there were baked sweet apples,
Mother's luscious brown bread,
And sweet fresh milk from our own Jersey cows;
Or hot soup from the last tomatoes in the garden,
With crusty home-made bread, hot from the oven,
Drenched with father's golden dairy butter.

And there were those lovely, lazy Saturdays -
Blue haze on the mountains,
A tapestry of red and gold and bronze spread across the countryside;
Clean air fragrant with the scent of frost-touched grass
       and burning leaves.

Those were the days.
Nothing can ever be so perfect as those happy, youthful days
        in retrospect.
There must have been cold, gloomy, rainy days of grumbling discontent,
But they have been forgotten,
Obliterated by the kindly hand of Time.
Recalling those lovely days of yesteryear I shed a tear or two
        of longing
For that long-lost past when I was young and life was good.
I breathe a prayer of thankfulness, however,
For these memories of home and loving parents;
And bless the Lord for giving me the golden opportunity
To live those joyous carefree days of yore.