random bria - childhood.

I often find myself reminiscing about my childhood and wishing that I could go back, even for just a few days, to be a kid again. Part of this could be that I am observing my own children now, catching the joy and sense of adventure in their eyes, but my mind keeps snagging on little memories of my childhood.

I think about having 'band' meetings up on my sisters top bunk and deciding what our new name should be (this was way more important than actually writing songs). I think about playing in the huge mounds of top soil that my dad would order on occasion. I loved cuddling with my mom in the afternoon sun or burying my nose into my dogs soft hair and thinking that he smelt like buckwheat honey. I miss feeling the need to spend half-an-hour drawing the perfect heart around my new boyfriends initials, only to cross it out the next day. I think about going to summer camp and feeling homesick watching my mom drive away then having a sense of relief wash over me when I find a note from her tucked in my bag. I also remember falling in love with a camp counsellor who was at least ten years my senior every year and having no doubt in my mind that he feels the same way and that we'll find a way to make it work. I miss the times that I would spend with my best friend Jared sometimes sneaking down into his parents basement to eat ridiculous amounts of popcorn from his dads popcorn business. I think about my pencil rental company that I started in my grade five class...I never did make much money on it. Liberty Street comes up and I am reminded of the nights of playing 'Mission Impossible' with the neighbourhood kids (back when kids that lived on the same street where friends and when kids were allowed out after dark). So much fun. So much silliness. So much adventure.

So what is it about my childhood and growing up that seems to have this grip on my heart lately? Is it the innocence? Or maybe it's the joy...or the clean slate? Better yet, it could be the lack of responsibility (read: bills), or maybe it's that lately I've been so stressed and weighed down that I'm reflecting on simpler times. Times when I would stand at the ballet bar in my room thinking that I was the best and most beautiful ballerina, even though I had never stepped foot in a dance class. The feeling of stepping off of the bus on the last day of school before summer break and not knowing where to start or what to do first. Months of wide open spaces of hot summer days ahead of you. Instead I have this perpetual uneasy feeling in my stomach, the same feeling that I would always get the last day of summer break.