Summer Memories on a Winter Night

Summer nights spent in my small comfortable bedroom on Norwood Avenue hold special memories for me. I remember the way the air would feel at night. The clarity of it was amazing. It was not only fresh and lightly scented, but it could carry sound like a concert hall. I would settle in my bed every night and listen to the sounds going on all about me as I was lulled into sleep. The train horn blowing gently in the distance as the crickets just outside chirped in harmony. A car would drive by occasionally with a quiet whoosh barely noticeable. Those nights were lucky if there was a breeze and we could hear it in the trees as the leaves would rustle with their pleasure at the winds touch. The sadness now that is created by this memory is not that it was a sad or unhappy place. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. The memory is so vivid and wonderful that when I stop remembering and realize that it is past it's like having been to Wonderland and realizing that Wonderland no longer exists. My little room in that little house is no longer available to me. It’s no longer mine, but someone else's home. It has changed so much as to not exist any longer. These are just memories that cannot be revisited in person to prove that they ever existed at all. I do have a few mementos that prove otherwise, but they are not that place. They are not what was my home.