Around This Time, Some Time Last Year

I don’t mean to keep posting old photos but I can’t help it. Something about this season; this time of year. Every time I start updating my blog with more recent photos I get sucked right back into snapshots from a previous time, place, and life. These photos pop up like an old friend I haven’t seen in a while, and I cannot help myself but to stop and sit a while to revisit old memories. No wonder I never get around to posting photos until years after the fact.

For some reason when I found these photos today, the song “A Long December” popped up into my head which only contributed to my reverie. I have been missing our old home. I miss this ratty tree that shielded us so well from our neighbors across the way. I miss the muddy little creek, hidden by spindly trees and prickly brush, that curved around the back of our house.

When we moved to the East Coast I never thought I could hold such strong feelings for my new environment, and yet that is where I often find my mind drifting these days. When I think of ‘home’ it is this version of home, this house with its weathered deck perpetually littered with crunchy brown leaves, that my mind returns to repeatedly. I think of the chilly air, the gently rustling leaves, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting over from our neighbor’s backyard patio. I think of our kitties — all three of them — happily lounging outside all day, from late morning until the sun set low in the sky.

And just like that, I have snapped all the way back through the dimension of time and space to the exact moment when I stood on the second floor,  feet firmly planted on our old cream-colored carpet, leaning precariously over the rusty railing of our bedroom window to capture those few ordinary, precious, fleeting, golden, moments.