AS TIME GOES BY—
Called The Watering Trough when I was growing up, the old building has taken on a new face and a new name now, but all the memories are still there.If the walls could talk of the past—
they might speak of laughter-filled days, broken hearts, triumphs and trials all jumbled together. Of Mom and Dad and Heather and me.Of slipping downstairs late at night to feast on a hot roast beef on crusty bread with a noggin o' chaise, just me and my dad sitting in the open windows facing the street, lights turned low, the street lamps and lights of the cars passing on the motorway casting shadows across the table while we talked in low voices so as not to wake Mom and Heather who had long since gone to sleep.
Those were good times for me. And when my dad thought it was time to get some sleep, he would send me up the stairs to bed. I remember holding to the hand rail, smooth from years of traipsing up and down those stairs. Such a handsome piece of wood with my DNA all over it. And such great remembrances of Dad sitting at the table until his day finally ended and he climbed the same stairs to Mom.
If memory serves me, there was a fireplace in every room. Much needed during the five months of winter every year. When I was younger, I would trudge to the third floor at night to a bath near freezing until Mom would add a kettle of hot water from the stove, making it bearable. Quite warm if she added two. Ahh! Getting out to a towel warmed at the stove, and putting on layers of flannel, I would run to my bed and pull the quilts to my neck. Even with all the cover I could still draw in a breath and when I exhaled, watch the air around me turn frosty white. The windows, glass and lead, were all iced up not just on the outside but on the inside.
But after age ten, things changed.
Dramatically.
From GIBBO.
Coming soon!
Jane BG
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