A Day at the Beach

So often I resent memories.  There are so many bad memories that often flood my mind that it is hard to think of memories as a good thing.  But today we took a trip to the city where I lived when I was little.  Where I lived on the same road as my Grandpa, Grandma, Great Aunt, Uncle and Aunt.  From my Grandpa's old house you can go down to the beach on the inlet. 

It was great to get to show my husband and kids where I used to live and all the houses where relatives used to live.  Even the house my dad lived in as a kid is still there (pretty run down and looks abandoned, but it's still there).  While walking on the beach I was flooded with so many good memories. 

I remember one time we were on the beach with all the family.  The beach isn't a sandy one.  It is filled with rocks, shells and barnacles.  I was quite young (maybe 3 or 4) and I tripped on a rock and fell.  I fell onto rocks covered in barnacles, which scraped up my bare legs.  I started crying.  My grandma asked me what was wrong and I told her that the barnacles bit me.  She gave me a hug and helped me up the hill to her house where she cleaned up the cuts and bandaged me up. 

On the drive down the road, I had memory after memory come into my mind.  I saw the old cherry tee that my friend and I used to climb up to sit in, eat cherries and talk.  I saw the pine tree that I climbed when I was little that got sap in my hair.  It was so hard to get out that my mom had to cut a patch of my hair all the way down to my scalp.  I could still see my siblings and I riding our bikes to the mail boxes to get our grandparent's mail and then ride it down to their house to give it to them.  Then in return our grandma would give us homemade ice cream or cookies.  Sometimes she would give me her home canned prunes, which were my favorite.

After today I am happy to have memories.  Some memories may be sad or upsetting, but the happy memories are able to overpower the bad memories if we let them.