Whether we choose to bring good memories along in life or hang on to the negative memories we could be deciding factors that will affect us in this life. My youngest sibling (of which I have five) is 50 this year and on a spiritual journey. Is that the age of the infamous mid-life crisis? No matter! Because it is yielding very positive results, for her and for me!

Not only does she share her musings but also I am benefiting with some great reads. One such book is Law of Attraction and while I must admit while going through the book I found that old “baggage” has risen up to rear its ugly head. However, this book has helped me to process many old memories.

And so I decided to share with you an excerpt of a short story of my family that I have written. My family may not remember our childhood as I have written it here but keep in mind I am writing to you from how I “remember” my childhood. To say these are facts is subject to interpretation because really, can any one of us say our memories are factual at best? Most memories are cradled in our mind wrapped around our emotions and the outcome we choose to bring out to share with others. I choose here to share the good times.

Childhood for me was being raised in a “divorced” family with five siblings. My dad was out of the picture at a tender age of five for me while my youngest sibling never even knew him. The tales of childhood memories are that we are all better off to not have known him. But my mother can best be remembered for her accomplishments of being a single, divorced woman of the 1950s. Many younger women do not remember when there was a time a single, divorced woman could not get a good job, credit or even own a home. But my mother did. She sent herself to school to get a passable job.  Bought a house for all six of us to either have a bedroom to ourselves or share with one sibling. She fed us, put clothes on our backs and took us through life at 314 South 7^th Street. And sometimes the memories of that home are shrouded in unpleasant memories of childhood. But it benefits me to remember some good memories as well.

My mother died when she and I had been estranged for most of my life. I was overseas and wailed loudly in the arms of my husband as I felt the loss of my mother. Mom and I, well you see we did not get along. She made amends before she passed and for that I will be forever grateful. And for that act she forced herself to do I have paid her tribute more than once because she cared enough to do it. Once I raised money for Relay for Life in her name because she gave up her fight with cancer too early in life. Yes, cancer was the Grim Reaper who came for her. So here I pay her tribute as I share with you an excerpt of a short story I wrote about canning and tomatoes and childhood memories.

Summertime and the livin’ is easy for kids in the early 1960s. We spent our summers just hanging about the house, going swimming at the local park’s pool and canning. It was not unusual to see kids playing in the yard or visiting the other neighbor kids instead of going to ballet, gym or t-ball. In the air you heard mowers, many of which were powered by physical labor in the age of the push mower. No one used those fancy gas or electric push mower we use today that ease over the lawn either! Also could be heard the sound of sprinklers, bees, cars and sometimes overhead a new-fangled Super Sonic Jet trying out its wings to see if it could break the sound barrier. As we would looked up, boom! And then it would move off across the sky. Such was the life on this summer day that I remember with my sisters and mother preparing an assembly line production of canning tomatoes for the winter.

My mother was a single, divorced woman who worked forty hours a week and owned our home, but a woman in her situation did not make a lot of money so with six children gaping like chicks in a nest for food she had to think up creative ways to keep us fed. My grandparents lived through the Great Depression so my mother picked up some great survival skills. One of these was canning. Canning is still done but nowadays I find canning is done more for those who want the experience or chose to have chemical free foods. Our basement had shelves with which were filled were canned tomatoes, cherries and other foods that were meant to take us through a cold winter in the cold country of Washington State. We knew that winter was inevitable with snow and cold keeping us house bound for a large part of the winter. And so we, my sisters and I, would gather in the kitchen with lids and jar seals clanging together. As we sorted them glass jars were being sorted and disinfected into pints and quarts. All this preparation so that we could “can” the red, ripe, luscious tomatoes my mother brought home for us to “put up” for the winter.

As we busied ourselves with chatter and bickering and an occasional remark, “stop that right now” of chastisement from mom the process of canning would get underway. Imagine if you will the smell of a ripe tomato freshly washed. Some of these juicy delectable maters would be put in the pot to steam off the skins; some would find their homes in homemade tomato sauce. And sometimes they would find their home in one hand with a salt shaker in the other. As we would prepare to bite into a juicy red tomato, us girls would take our much earned break, sitting on the steps. We would sit there on the back porch steps bent over so as not to drip on our clothing. But the sweet smell of tomatoes would waft up as the juice dripped down our hand over the wrist with trails of seeds dropping off bent elbow. At times, if we were not careful, the acidic juice would trail over a scratch causing a burning sensation that required immediate attention. Then, and only then, could we sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor, feeling soul satisfied basking in the late afternoon sun on that hot August day as we would sit barefooted with cutoffs (which, in those days were just the long pants that were too worn out at the knee making a second life as shorts).

Ah, now to relax and take in a job well done and the splendors of summer.
But the days of warm memories of childhood of the 1960s would disrupt into the coming decades, bringing with it the complexities of puberty and the memories that are not so pleasant today. Life was good when putting up tomatoes but soon we would learn to appreciate what we had as things began to change before our very eyes and we became partners of change not knowing what trail it was taking us.

As you can see from the excerpt of my short story that memories are tricky and can be tainted with negative thoughts that crowd in on us as adults or release us from the past. It really is up to us how we choose to remember. It follows us into adult, to parenthood, as we get older. We swear that we will never raise OUR children the way were raised, implying, there was something too negative in our family of origin. But alas, we end up using the only skills of parenthood we understand. The ones we were taught. And of course we all amend parental skills as each generation comes along. We not only use the tools from our family to muddle through but also the world around us as well. It too shapes who we are and how we build our memories. I, for one have chosen to remember well. I do not pretend to be naive about things because I know some things were not so pleasant. However, they do not own me now unless I allow it.

My youngest sibling and I were talking the other day and realized that a lot of what we grumble about are about things we make a choice to do. They are not mandatory. Such as volunteering, going to school or maintaining some relationships. These are options in life we have chosen so why complain about them IF we opt to do them? What does that attract? And the Law of Attraction states we cannot attract “more of what want, less of what we don’t” unless we take ownership of our memories, choices and many times how we saw that past memory such as that hot August summer day. Was it a positive experience or tainted by the feeling that we were so poor we HAD to put up food for the winter?

We can all decide, that doesn’t mean we do not have things happen. Everyone does. What we do with that information is the key to success.

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