When I was a child

Sometimes in the evenings, when the day has cooled, and the shadows are long, and the afternoon breeze has stopped and all is calm...

I sit and look out across the land and my thoughts often return to the time when I was a child...

In my mind I can hear the babbling of a small brook that flowed beside the dirt road that led to my home...

The road itself smelled of sulfur on a hot summer day; in years past the road had been a "haul road" for a coal company which chose to maintain the road surface with waste material from the mine.

Sometimes after a summer rain, I liked to pull my shoes off and wade in the water puddles left on the road...wade and feel ...feel the cool water and the soft mud squish up between my toes.

By the time I would get home, I would be covered from head to toe with mud, and I smelled of sulfur...and sometimes I might even be covered with purple spots from a few "well placed shots" from my brother throwing "elderberries" at me.

And sometimes I think of my mother , a beautiful lady, as I suppose most are, in the eyes of their children...;a very loving and caring mother as well as being tolerant and understanding of the adventures that a young boy needs to attend to.

Whether it be the slaying of a dragon in the form of a small garden snake or the capture of a tiger which turned out to be a chipmunk , she stood behind me all the way...her gentle hand on my shoulder or her fingers in my blonde hair... I knew that she loved me... and I knew she was always there.

Mom, .....I miss you and I love ...and this I am... not a boy as I remember, but a full grown man..

T.S.Blue

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