memories for 25 cents

Yesterday on the way to drop Ed off at work, a sign snagged my eye. MOVING SALE. Course sale signs always catch my eye. But this one screamed at me. I dropped Ed off and set a course for the moving sale. One minute later I was flooring the gas to make it up the driveway to the house. There wasn't much of anything special at this sale. Nothing spectacular or a great find. I really didn't even look once I got out of the car. A man came out and said hello. I said, "I saw the moving sale sign and had to come. Honestly, I didn't come for the sale. I wanted to see the house. I grew up here." He was really surprised and said he was so happy I stopped by and would I like to see the inside? Well sure I would! He was the man who bought the house from my parents back when I was 10 years old and actually remembered them. For a split second worry crossed my mind that if I entered the house, all memories would be confused with the current way the house was vs. the way I remember it in my childhood brain. I took the tour of the house. No memories assaulted or rushed forward. There was only one thought. The house had shrunk. The hallway seemed to have been cut in half. The living room was a fraction of the size I remember. My room didn't look the same without the over sized flowers on the wallpaper that I loved. The family room/breezeway didn't go on forever like it used to. The willow tree that we swung on was gone, along with the sandbox I played in for hours. The pine trees that my parents planted had grown so tall and in contrast made the barn look like a shed. I called my parents while walking around and told them where I was. I took a picture with my phone. The memories are still there. I can barely recollect the way it looks now as the 20+ year old pictures seared into my memories over rode a quick walk through years later. I'm glad I did it though. I always wondered if memories could easily be wiped out and now know that they'll always be with me. The time I dropped the bucket full of sand on my big toe and the nail fell off, when I tried to take the dog bone away from the puppy and it bit me in the forehead, rescuing the baby bunny only to find it gone when my brothers "threw it behind the barn as it was dying", picking double headed daffodils, going snowmobiling in the fields behind the house, being left on my own for the first time and sobbing as I was so scared, getting lost in the swamp next door, eating dinner as a family every night, hitting baby mice with a shovel, being terrified of worms, have my own pet chicken (Chicken Little) riding my big wheel, coming home from school one day to a kitchen splattered with chicken noodle soup and hearing my mom was in the hospital from being burned by a pressure cooker full of soup being unpressurized. The list could go on, but I won't bore you.

Oh...and I did buy a 25 cent flour sifter. I've always wanted one of those.