OH memory

Perhaps it’s the news of late…perhaps it is the proximity of Canada Day to Independence Day…perhaps it is summertime or the fact that I am about to return to the United States for the first time in a while.

Whatever the motivation, the other day I made a list of things I remembered about my years growing up in Ohio before middle school.  I know it is not the whole story; I knew it as a child too.  These are things that stay with me, though.  And I am grateful.

Ohio Childhood

Hay rolls and MailPouch barns;

Balsawood airplanes, bread bag kites.
Kool-Aid ice cubes in old yogurt cups;
Husking corn, shelling beans,
(Don’t touch the peppers);
arrow heads in the fields;
A praying mantis; pill bugs curling;
honeysuckle, fireflies,
black-eyed Susans beneath the kitchen;

the big yellow slide;

Snapdragons talking,
rolling down hills,
climbing into the sanctuary,
the green, cool, sanctuary,
of the buckeye tree
at the top of the gardens;
a length of rope, an old telescope,
and time and imagination;
resting on a boulder
dropped by a glacier
so that I might have
a place to read.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ