I remember Mommy coming into the room.

I don't remember where I was. It was probably at my grandmother's house, but that detail is lost to me forever. I remember Mommy coming into the room, and I remember being oh so happy to see her. I probably peed a little, but I was allowed to, back then.

And then I saw it.

I'd reached my arms up as high as they would reach, and I'd jumped with my little legs to reach even higher, and I'd yelled one of the only words I knew at the time.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

So Mommy would see me, so she would hear me, so she would pick me up like she always had before. So my world would be complete again.

But she didn't pick me up. Her arms were full.

She was carrying it.

That is my earliest memory.

It turned out to be my sister Dina, and I was 21 months old.

---

I remember playing with a girl. She had long dark hair. We sat on the floor between the kitchen and the living room, and we played.

I remember the house, and I remember the girl. It was probably my cousin Terri, but I can never know for sure.

That memory is so strong in my mind. I couldn't have been more than 3 years old.

---

Dad came and woke me up, and carried me to Dina's room. Then he put me down and picked Dina up. The three of us - how odd that I don't remember Mom being there - went into the living room.

On the TV, I watched grainy footage of white-suited men bouncing around on a white plain.

I wondered why Dad had tears in his eyes.

I was 4 and a half years old.

---

I'd walk to kindergarten, and my long shadow would lead me down the road. Then, when I'd walk back home, the shadow would be short and stocky, and it would chase me all the way home.

I asked Mom why my shadow was so different when I came home, and she said she didn't know.

---

I was showing my friend Kelly how fast I could run with my new shoes. I ran through a glass door.

Dad carried me, both of us covered in blood, and took me to the doctor. I got 81 stitches, and I still have scars. I remember being afraid that the doctor was going to cut off my nose. It had been hurt badly.

I was 5 years old.

---

I'm not sure what the point of this entry was.

Maybe it's just to change the damn subject.

Since I'm suffering from mental constipation I thought I'd try putting in some entries from the past.

As a test I did this one and surprise, it worked!

Of course, I may get bored with this, and I will certainly have to guess at some dates, but it should be interesting. To me at least.

Not really sure how to (or if I should bother to) announce that there are new old entries like this. I suppose that it's just safe to assume that anything dated before September 2003, when I started this 'blog, is a new old entry.

Oh, yeah. Some of these will be taken from my memory, but others (starting around 1980) will be from actual paper journals.

I will probably get tired of digging up old memories fairly quickly.

So yesterday I was sitting at Polly's Freeze, enjoying my lunch and thinking about my childhood.

I grew up 200 yards from Polly's. My mom and my aunt worked at Polly's. My best friend's parents owned the place. My grandmother's house sat between my house and Polly's. My uncle's family lived back by the woods. They had a pool.

There are an awful lot of memories crammed into that quarter-mile stretch of highway 62. I like to sit at Polly's and let them come flooding back to me.

Anyway, yesterday I was eating my lunch and this school bus pulled up to MaMaw's old house and a bunch of kids got off.

Got off the bus, you pervert.

It was just weird.

I know that new people, strangers to me, are in that house now. I just never really thought of them as living there until I saw those kids. To those kids, that is their house.

Those kids have no inkling of all the fun my sisters and cousins and I had in that house when we were kids, no inkling of the love that my grandmother had for all of us. They're too busy making their own memories.

I wonder if they ever get scared of the upstairs like we used to.

I wonder if they've discovered how to get in to the attic, or that you can squeeze through the vent and get from an upstairs bedroom to the living room without going down the stairs.

I wonder if they look at that huge Maple tree in the front yard and wonder, "Could I build a treehouse there?"

I hope they do all those things. I hope they appreciate where they're living. I hope they make that house a home.

My own childhood home is long gone, a victim of death and deceit. My old yard has reverted back to being just another field. My woods have been leveled to make room for even more houses. My grandfather's propane business, later my uncle's nursery, those are gone too.

All those memories, crammed into a quarter-mile stretch of road. That's all most of them are anymore, just memories.

But two things remain. Polly's Freeze and MaMaw's house. They stand as they always have, watching over that stretch of road.

And where they stand, a part of me stands.