Memories of Mama braiding my hair and making crafts with me. The times when our small kitchen, warmed by a real wood stove, smelled of homemade oatmeal cookies and coffee, and if you were to take 4 steps away from the kitchen counter you would catch the scent of burning wood. I would watch as Dad slipped on an old leather glove, opened the black, ash-laden door to the stove and pile more logs on. I love that memory. It reminds me of how simple things used to be.
Or all the times that my sister, brother, and I would hose down our back patio at night. We would wake up extra early the next morning before school, just so we could slip across the ice and catch a few extra giggles before we hit the books. We smiled so much then. There was snow, and snow angels, and snow sleds, and even a snowman family that greeted passing cars at the end of our long driveway, dirt churned with snow. One year there were even icicles, something I had never seen before that year.
We bought real Christmas trees then, and the house permeated with the scent of pine. Pine, wood, smoke, cookies, warmth, hot chocolate, and pumpkin and spices and cinnamon and apples; an aroma that was so strong and savory it seeped through the wood our house was built from and into the outdoors.
I am also flooded with memories of people. People who lived in the small town we did, the people who have changed my life and will always be apart of it whether they are present in it or not. People like Emily Bosma, Brianna Forewood, Melissa Graves, Mr. Farris the Jr. High band teacher, and the nice man who ran the local corner store, Ranchers. I don't remember his name, but he always smiled when we went in. I was welcome there, even as an unsupervised 13 year old. That said something.
But we moved from that small town. Our new house smelled of its previous owners, old drywall, and every so often the waft of animal. It was heated electrically.
Mama made Amish bread in the new kitchen, and Dad didn't chop wood anymore. We got a fake Christmas tree to replace the real ones we had every year. And there was no snow.
People from this new town resurface: people like Josh Paschall, Chloe Weick (who is now a Chloe Vaughan), Dani DelRosario, Rose Barnes, and Alyssa Elliott.
There are many memories with Josh Paschall in them. Pressed Skittles between my Bible pages, that horrible orange sweatshirt he loved to wear, and I will never forget Halo and fried chinchilla tacos and 7-layer burrito cakes. He was my best friend for years.
We don't talk anymore.
This chill wind, tainted with sadness, also reminds me of a church. Not a quaint country church, but a church that met in the industrial center of town. The church where most of the people I cherish from our new town went. It was a place called Safe Harbor, and the youth group was on fire for Jesus. They loved the Lord with a passion you wouldn't expect from high schoolers. And it was amazing.
I remember Dani Del and Rose leading worship. It wasn't just music. It never is for them. You could hear the deep love they held for their Lord, their reverence for Him through song. The youth there followed suit, arms held high, fingers spread wide, some with tears of joy or pain or submission or thankfulness streaming from their eyes. The message was solid, the Christian support true, and the common question of evangelism was never absent: they went, they did, no questions asked.
And then people gradually left, some willingly, some unwillingly. Pretty soon all that remained was the backbone of the had-been administration and the few faithful families whose love for the church exceeded their need to move on. That church faded away, slowly and painfully, leaving a deep chasm of pain and misery in its wake.
Our best friend Alyssa managed to stay with my sister and I after the church split, but even that didn't last long. I blame the boy, but after 2 years and much prayer I can thank the Lord for reconciliation.
Many more memories swamp me. Relationships that came to a painful end, plans made that were never executed and executed plans that never worked out. People who were once so strong, who I looked up to, but who slammed themselves into the world and lost their way. People who I've hurt, and people who have hurt me. People who I have lost, and people I have gained. Love given and love taken; hearts mingled with excitement and soon after, bitterness.
Indeed, the wind is sweeter this year, more so than years previous. It smells of the beauty of remembered memories, the warm ones that are reflected in the eyes of every child. But the wind is hollow, too. It whispers the words of unheeded wisdom, it taunts at wrong decisions made, and strokes the heart where loneliness is, ever intensifying it.
Is this what growing up feels like?
