A bit nostalgic...

This is something I wrote over 2 years ago, but I will re-post it here, as it fits with how I've been feeling lately.

I don't know why, but lately I have been very reminiscent, very very nostalgic. I often get lost in my childhood memories of my grandparents and great-grandparents.. My fondest music choices lately tend to be old hymns that my great-grandmother and my grandmother sang to me when I was little. I remember my grandfather, a deacon in our southern baptist church, teaching me the rye-whiskey song. (My mother didn't think it was so cute.) I remember my great-grandpa's old coin collection, and antique guns. I remember my grandpa letting me drive a real train, and stories of the Great Depression. I constantly wonder what life was like in the 1940's and 1950's. Life was so much simpler back then. I miss our family gatherings at my great-grandparents' house, when each holiday was another family reunion, as EVERYONE in the family was there. I remember my great-grandmother, a woman who once owned her own restaurant (Goldie's), baking a strawberry pie just for me each holiday because she knew how much I liked strawberries. I remember the old, musty smell of my great-grandfather's garage, and the countless treasures I found there in the antique tools, and old junk, glass pop bottles, and railroad lanterns he collected. I remember "helping" my grandpa fix lawnmowers, seeing his tanned forearms and pale white biceps, the "farmer's tan" that he got from spending hours each day as a switchman riding the trains of the Rock Island Railroad. I remember fishing for hours and hours with my grandpa and my uncle in a small aluminum boat on lake Tenkiller every summer. I remember catching the biggest fish I've ever caught in my life with my grandpa. It was a 5 pound bass that I was so proud of that I made a plaster cast of it. I remember hearing my great-grandmother tell and re-tell the story of how her father, my great-great grandfather, Gustav Berg, came to America on a boat from Sweden at the age of seventeen, knowing no English and no one, and how he eventually became a methodist circuit preacher, traveling in a horse and buggy, holding tent revivals to bring the lost to Christ. I often hold his Bible, my most cherished possession, a Swedish Bible ( I can't read it ), printed in 1842, and wonder what his life was like. I remember old Studebakers and old Chryslers were always parked in my great-grandparents' driveway. I remember my grandparents giving me my first Bible when I was baptized at the age of 6 or 7 in Southern Heights Baptist church. I remember my grandparents coming over to my house and sitting in my grandpa's lap, and he would always affectionately slap my leg and say, "How's my little man?", or "How's my favorite grandson?" (I was his only grandson - at that point I had all sisters!) As I sit pondering why I feel compelled to put these thoughts to pen and paper, I realize that my childhood was imminently blessed with memories of my grandparents and great-grandparents. These precious memories fill my grateful heart, yet my heart breaks at the same time, knowing that my daughters will never be afforded those same experiences. I can only do my part to pass along my memories and the timeless stories of an era when life was much simpler and family was the most precious commodity.