I think a lot of my old neighborhood and growing up in Decatur and there’s one television show that always takes me back there, The Wonder Years.  The dad in the tv show was a lot like my dad.  My dad and I locked horns like Karen and Jack Arnold, not because we were too different.  Our problem was, we were too much alike.  Like Jack, my dad often grunted at the dinner table after a hard day at work instead of forming full sentences, especially the time when my mom told me to use “protection” if I were to have sex.  My dad growled, snarled in fact and about choked on his food, while giving my mom a look of disapproval.  It was more than disapproval.  It was as if he was accusing my mom of sacrificing his virgin daughter to a volcano.  I’m sure there was probably a discussion between the two later but the growl pretty much told me what he thought of the matter.  Dad’s are that way about their daughters. Moms are more practical.

My mom wasn’t a stay at home mom like Norma.  She worked for a Chevrolet dealership in Decatur for over 22 years.  There she too locked horns with various managers who came and went.  Being a female in a workplace filled with so much testosterone wasn’t always easy but she was always up for the task.  She started as a cashier for the service department until it was realized she was probably more suited for a behind the scene job, especially after telling a rude customer to drive his car in the lake or a foul-mouthed abusive one to evolve into a human being before speaking to her again.  Other than that she was really a very quiet person, with a very short temper.

One thing I always enjoyed about The Wonder Years is how it made me feel about my childhood in a romanticized way.  Hearing the street lights humming, the locusts imitating emergency defense sirens,  seeing the glow of lightning bugs beneath the willow tree and the lamp inside the living room where safety abounded were all wonders.  Yes, there were many parts of growing up that I’d rather forget but the good memories keep me grounded in the faith that God is real.  I never questioned it then.  God’s evidence was everywhere.  Somehow those feelings went away after graduating high school and getting married.

Bills awaited me in the mailbox and dishes in the sink never washed themselves.  Jobs I’ve had have left much to be desired.  My bank account is too small to collect dust, let alone interest.  Still, I’ve been an adult long enough to know that I can look back at early adulthood with some of the same nostalgia as my childhood years.  Remembering how the house looked when we first moved in and how I felt the first few months by myself, alone, at night, with nobody else.  I was scared out of my head!  While my husband worked the night shift, I was left to fend for myself in a strange house, surrounded by neighbors who weren’t friendly like the ones I grew up with, in fact they all seemed weird.  It didn’t feel much like a home.  The house felt as safe as a tent in grizzly territory.  It always felt like that at any moment an ax was about the chop through the front door or the sight of a knife-wielding maniac standing at the foot of my bed would awake me in the middle of the night.  Those were the days!

But now, I’d love to go back to those days and relive them, just for a little while, this time much wiser and appreciative – especially knowing I lived through them without being hacked to death.  To be with my dog Davey again and Minnie when she was young and healthy would be awesome.  To see that hideous carpet in the living room and that God-awful brown toilet with that truly terrible faux painting technique on the bathroom walls  would be like heaven.  Come to think of it, I’m satisfied with just seeing the house from yesteryear in just my memories.  I would love to have Davey back though.  I guess I’ll have to wait for heaven for that sight.  I wouldn’t even mind if the brown toilet was there.  It’s part of me – a brown toilet. It may not be evidence of God’s handiwork like lightning bugs beneath the weeping willow but it’s still part of what has made me, me.  Even a toilet can become a romanticized memory.

My mom passed away in 2004 and I get along a lot better with my dad now.  He rarely grunts or growls, except at the thought of his grand-daughters dating.  At least some things never change.