"May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, 

and the road downhill all the way to your door."

An Irish Blessing

MY FIRST HOME

We have all lived in different houses during our lifetime, but is there a place that stands out vividly in your mind? For me, that house was in Oaklawn, Illinois.  It was a house at the end of a dirt road, right next to a railroad track. It had, to my child’s memory, a huge side yard, a gigantic house, and twenty-one varieties of trees on the other side of the house.  There was a prairie across the street, a creek down the block, and a half-mile stretch down the road to Cicero Avenue, it was a five-year-old’s magical playground.

The railroad would rumble down the track at about three o’clock in the afternoon and I would run out into the side yard to wave at the caboose when it passed my house.  There was always a conductor at the back of the train that waved at me and sometimes threw little gifts off the back of the train, a piece of chalk, a folding cup, or some small and interesting thing.

Visiting it as an adult, it was actually a small house with a broken window that had blue plastic taped over one pane; there were old cars in the side yard; and there was a hospital across the street, where the prairie had been. Isn’t it interesting to capture those before and after moments?

"Today is a gift, that's why they call it a present."                                              Anonymous

Is there a place that you remember living in as a child, that you visited later in life? Does it still look the same? What memories do you have of it? How does it feel to remember it and the things you experienced there?

Love and light,

Sandy