I Remember, Mama

Here's deep gratitude to my mother, who dreamed of living in the most beautful home in our little town. When I was five years old, her dream came true. My parents, my sister and I became The Folks Who Live On The Hill. The house rested midst four acres of meadow and woods, bordering Mr. Bailey's farm where he kept dairy cows. Times were enlivened considerably whenever one of the heifers took advantage of an unlocked gate, casually wandering into our back garden. Summers found me quietly reading my Nancy Drew books under the tall trees. Could my childhood surroundings have been more idyllic? Well, yes: there was a small lake just across the road, down a path filled with wild blueberry bushes.

Thinking of my mother this Sunday and all the happy years I spent in that house (where, among other things, my sister and I invented a clever rainy-day diversion we called "Name That Tune"), I knew from the moment I heard it, the song "Looking Back" by Jimmy Rowles perfectly describes those days. The startling thing is that the lyric was written by a then amazingly mature nineteen year-old named Cheryl Ernst.

This is the house where I grew up, followed by the lyric:

I still see the meadow come alive with the morning
From the house where I lived as a child
And the sun as he lifted his lazy head
Shining down where the clover grows wild

The nights that I slept with all the windows wide open
The rain coming in through the screen
And the pale silvery mist draped around the moon
Was the loveliest sight I have seen

Then I left and I wandered
Through the world on my own
But that old house on the hill
The only home I have known

The shelter of tall grass
Was made for young lovers
To lie down and dream upon
Though the years and the worries
Have changed my life
All the memories of then still live on

Coda:
And wherever I go
And the grayer I grow
I'll remember my home in the country