Memories - a day beside a stream dreaming (if you zap past the loft issues!)

For some light relief this morning, I looked at my Christmas List. And I cannot make head or tail of what I have scrawled there, so I closed the book with a thud. My sewing room is full of boxes. Other People's Boxes. And a multitude of boxes of Christmas stuff, including gifts made or acquired through the year which should be in the loft, but my mission is to empty the loft because I HAVE to empty it in order to adequately insulate it.

However, once the insulation is finally down, there will be no way I can replace all the contents of the loft, and people, my house is way too small for all those boxes. Groan. My idea that the "stuff" would act as insulation appears to be wrong. I have NO idea why.

The fact that some of those boxes have not been opened in 21 years is beside the point. Just the thought of them piled up in the living room prior to be booted out the front door is enough to send me into a tizz of epic proportions. And then there is the question re what I will be doing with the things I need and do not want to boot out the front door? The pile which will go to auction, to charity shops, to the kids? The toys they loved playing with back then.....  The memories which will swirl out of each box as I open them - the time I will take touching tangible evidence of times gone by.....

Life happened. Life happens. Memories are brushed together like a pile of leaves, and all you need is a slight breeze, never mind a howling gale, and those leaves are tossed all over the place. Little bits from the darkest reaches of my mind.

(The howling gale would be a metaphor for the mountain of boxes vacating the loft and disrupting my life. A hurricane may be more apt. My son would be the box-heaver-out-of-the-loft-er, by the way. If I got up there by some miracle, I would be destined to forever stay there, writing my missives from the loft. Hmmm. There are  others....we will not go there, will we.)

Yesterday, when I was writing about seasons, and drifted onto the moors, it was a surprise. An unexpected memory. I had forgotten the getting lost fun. And when I lay in bed last night, I remembered one very special picnic we had beside a stream on the moors, under a few trees. It was hot, and autumn too - the 1976 heatwave was slow to depart - and I had my feet in the water as we sat and talked of dreams. I had a real suspicion that I was pregnant with our first child, and only we knew. We had not had the doctor's confirmation yet, but we were pretty sure. Those were days before the little stick thingy went blue. The test took a while to come back.

So we sat there, and wondered about who our child would be. What we wanted for him or her. What kind of parents we would be...... just the two of us, and it was a wonderful quiet day of dreams. Hugging that secret to ourselves. Somewhere, I have a photo, I know. That child is now a father himself.

30 minutes later.......

Well. I hauled out the box of photos from the depths of my cupboard. They are all over the floor. 50 odd years of them. ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!! There are some polaroid ones which are fading badly - I need to scan them into the computer asap to save them, because they are memory triggers too. Good grief, if ever you need something to make you grin, unearth old photos. I did find one of Windsor Castle when Mum, Granny and I did a tour of the country....you have NO idea what we got up to, but now I know what I will be writing about tomorrow. Believe me, you will howl with laughter.......