April 3, 2001
Nostalgia
I'm feeling a trifle bit nostalgic today. I was lying in bed this morning when I should have been getting ready for school, thinking about being little and what getting up early meant then as opposed to the hellishness it leads to now.
My childhood summers were fantastic. I don't think I can ever recapture all those feelings, all those experiences. I remember when July was cold and foggy at five a.m., when my mom would shake my brother and I awake from our bunk beds (I slept on bottom, it's all about the bottom bunk) and garb us in little blue and pink sweat suits over top of our t-shirts and shorts. We'd climb into the car with pillows and sometimes even a blanket, watching groggily as dad finished packing the trunk (or the bed, as we had a pick-up truck for a while, too). It was Sunday, it was flea-market day. Justin and I had our own simple wares in our laps, hoping to sell some used, cheap plastic toy so we could in turn buy a new-used, cheap plastic toy.
I loved driving through the dew soaked streets, marveling at the lack of traffic and the deer and rabbits still rustling about in some yards at this early hour. To me the whole world was sleeping and I was awake; I was watching the world wake. It was a fantastic idea of power for a nine year old.
When we arrived at the flea-market the other vendors were shuffling in as well, fighting dad for the prize lots. He would drive around in circles for fifteen minutes, the determination dripping from his face, his quest to find the perfect spot impossible to squelch. Mom finally goaded him into submission and while they set up our tables and goods Justin and I would sit on the hood of the car (or the tail gate of the truck) and eat little chocolate donut gems and drink milk from our lunch box thermoses. Slowly, as the sun came up and dried the dew from the gravel, we would peel away our sweat shirts and pants, bounce around Mom and annoy her to the point where she veritably commanded us to go look around.
Justin and I could wander for hours among the various lots, lost in the wonder of twenty-five cent friendship bracelets and pogs (does anyone else remember those?), broken toys and coin collections, tattered Nancy Drews and those disturbing rubber-stretchy wrestling figures. Mom, despite her endless effort to quell our shopping endeavors (and her always reversible claims that she wasn't going to give us any money, not a single quarter), allowed us to meander about with our half-hearted promises to at least stay together.
We haven't been to the flea-market in years. That specific one that we visited so often in my childhood was torn down not a but a few years ago. Alas, sweet memories.
astera at morning-shmorning