Is It About The Place Or The Time?

I used this picture from 1976 for 'Throw back Thursday' on Facebook a few days ago which prompted this comment from my youngest son (pictured, age 5): "Miss that old place." I agreed with him commenting back that we had some great times there.

Then I started thinking, is it the places we miss or the times we lived in those places? Aren't some of our favorite memories of before our innocence was lost? Before we had to become responsible adults? Before loved ones passed on?

For instance, there are many things I miss about this place - the white farmhouse of my youth - before the front porch was enclosed and the clothesline taken down. When there was still a small oil tank on the south side of the house that I used to straddle and pretend I was riding a horse. But none of those things do I miss as much as I miss.....

The old woman who lived in that house. She who made more oatmeal than she could eat just so she could   lean out the back porch door to spoon feed some of her many cats.

I miss the place of the first picture and my three trees. Like a Druid, I worshiped their age, majesty and secrets. But more than the place and the trees...

I miss when we lived there because my babies were little - a precious time that passed all too quickly. If only I had had the time then that I have now - to spend long summer days playing, teaching, loving.

I miss this place - the house on Tuck Corner. We had to wait for our own place after moving back home and living with my Mom. Then we got this big, beautiful, former home of a state senator, acreage on which to live. But I miss it not because of the house which is now long gone.....

But because of the relationships I had while living there - with people and animals. I will always treasure the pure joy I felt of having my own gilts, Faith, Hope, Charity and Grace - attending the birthing and raising of those baby piglets.

And this place. If I could go back to a time in my life, it would be when we lived in the little house. Not only for the people and animals when I lived there, but for the surprising and indescribable connection I felt with the land there. I would walk the fields and feel I was rooted in the soil - even more-so than on the farm where I grew up.

In the last blog about missing Billy the Kid, I thought I would get the song out of my mind. I didn't. So maybe I missed the point. Maybe the point was the line about innocence lost. And isn't 'Miss that old place" about such a time in our lives?

So, while I miss those old places, as does my son, and there are days I miss the farm of my youth so much I could cry, it is the people, the time, the innocence of youth, the reasons for my memories that I miss.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  T.S. Eliot