Friday, August 29, 2008

Stirring the Pot of Memories


I think it's fascinating that everything we experience in life is stored in our memories. Everything we touch, everything we smell, everything we laugh about and cry about and love. Everything we see and everything we do. Everything we scoff about and rave about and joke about and feel. Every experience tucked away into the folds of our minds to recall or to forget. I think it's fascinating because, every once in a while, something happens in my life that pulls a forgotten memory to the present. And, depending on the memory, it is there once again for me to think about, smile about, laugh about, cry about, or try to forget once more.

Last night, after tucking my kids into bed, I heard them laughing and playing for about an hour before all was silent. When I went in to check on them before going to bed myself, I saw this beautiful picture that poured in some very welcome nighttime memories from about 22 years ago when I was McKenzie's age, and my sister, Michelle, was just a little older than Carson. We shared a room then, too, and every night we'd play 'quietly' so our parents wouldn't know we were awake. My favorite game was lovingly termed 'sandwich' - where we'd throw all pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals on each other to make ourselves into ... well ... sandwiches. When we'd had enough sandwiches, we'd sneak out of the room and sit in the loft to watch my parents - oh, we were sneaky! We never could figure out how they knew we were sitting there without even turning their heads. They would just very calmly and sternly say, "Lindseeeee, Micheeeeeelle, get back in bed." One night, there was a spider crawling up the wall at the head of my bed. I freaked out, but Michelle said (in her adorable lisp), "Don't wuhwey Winsey, I'w be bwave!" and smashed that spider into the wall using her bare hand! Oh, but we were quiet. It's pretty easy to be quiet while you're ripping off all your bedding and throwing it on each other, opening the door and sneaking into the loft area, and hitting the walls. Funny though, my parents always seemed to find out somehow...

I know we must have been quieter than my kids are now - surely the floorboards didn't rattle quite so loudly when we jumped off of our beds. Surely the walls were thicker when we were giggling. Surely the door we opened was perfectly squeakless. Surely we breathed a little quieter while we were spying on our parents. And we surely didn't whisper when we were only feet away from our parents ears!

I'm so glad I let them play last night instead of breaking up the party. They fell asleep at a reasonable time anyway, and hopefully they'll look back on this time in their lives with as much fondness as I do on my own early life. Thanks Mom and Dad, for letting us kids be kids.

I LOVE YOU MICHELLE!!!

8 comments:

  1. I think everyone played "quietly" at bedtime with their siblings - I know I sure did! We even played "sandwich"! :)

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  2. How sweet! I love that they will stay in their room together--my kids are terrified, even though they have each other.

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  3. Ah that is so cute! I can relate and your story brought up memories of Christal and me. We would stay up and play in our room when we were suppose to be going to bed. When we would hear my mom coming down the stairs, we would jump into bed and pretend we were sleeping. Makes you missing being a kid at times.

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  4. My philosophy is, as long as they don't have to get up for anything in the morning, and they're not bugging me....play away- the better for me to sleep late my dears!

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  5. Oh my heck. If there was ever a way to make me homesick! Freak, Linds. If nothing else, this post has made me realize that I HAVE to come visit you sometime soon. I miss you! I hadn't thought about sandwich in a loooong time.

    Do you remember the walkie-talkies we had when we had our own rooms? We'd talk way late at night... I don't think Mom and Dad knew about that one, either. :)

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  6. Anonymous3:30 PM

    I remember something like that with Celena. We would play and when we heard our mother coming to check on us, we would jump in bed and pretend that we were asleep. She was never quiet when she came down stairs. Now that I have kids of my own, I let them play because it is so cute when Mackenzie made Erika laugh. I sometimes go in there and tell them to go to bed after a while. It is fun when our children do stuff that remind us of our childhood.

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  7. That is so sweet Linds. I'm glad that you let them play too. I just hope that I'll remember this in a couple of months when we put Clara in Katherine's room. Reading this brought back a lot of memories for me too. How did they always know we were playing spy on them? It's not like we laughed THAT loud.

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  8. What a sweet picture! They are so darling.
    I love your "new" dining room! You are awesome!

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