REMEMBERING

Genealogy has a lot to do with memories – those of others, as well as our own.  I just read of a man whose mother’s alzheimers is progressing and he regrets not listening when she wanted to tell her stories and is trying hard to get them before it is too late.  Our own memories may seem trivial to us, but they can be precious to future generatons.  Today I am thinking of my childhood summers at “the cottage.”  Us kids (cousins) called it “Grandpa’s cottage,” because it was in Bancroft, Ontario, near where his farm was.  I remember rainy days in the big screened-in porch sitting with my cousin busily working in our coloring books while the rain pelted the lake and the brown sand.  It smelled so good and I was content to be in my cousin’s company comparing artistic renderings of ladies in fancy dresses and hats, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and lots of animals with colors that our mothers told us were not right.

On sunny days, we would make trenches, castles with moats, and pat, pat, pat the sand into shapes we wanted.  We were artists and princesses who controlled our world with itchy sand in our bathing suits and smelling like sunshine and fishy water.