Several weeks ago the children and I joined my mother for a day trip to the little town in rural West Alabama where she was raised. It was a sweet time of showing and telling, connecting with family, listening to stories, and standing in places that have, for many years, been only memories.
A highlight for me was visiting the home that my grandparents built. My aunt lives there now, in the house built of antique bricks with a big porch on the side, but everything is still so familiar, so little changed from the days of my childhood. When I stepped into the dimly lit breakfast room I saw the same table that's been there for as long as I can remember {always with hydrangeas in the center}, and I breathed the same familiar house-smell that's lived there always, and I peered out the window at the same piney backyard view, and in the seeing and the smelling and the remembering I realized that, although the moment might be fleeting, sometimes, in a breath and in a heartbeat, we can go back. And, it was sweet.
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