Hearing Memories in Nature:

            On a recent Saturday evening, I was bringing the groceries in from the car when I heard them--the memories, my childhood, woods, a front porch.  First, it was the bird.  I don't know enough about bird calls to know what kind of bird it was; but it was the same bird call I used to hear in the woods when I was a child or in the meadows behind the house Lydia and I occupied near Bristol, Tennessee, twenty years ago. It kind of echoed through the trees, sounding far away yet near at the same time.  It was sort of a haunting call that reminded me of other times and other places that hadn't come to mind in years.

 

And then, of course, there were the katydids.  You may call them June bugs or something else, though I think there are minor differences among some of those species of quasi-insects. Anyhow, I knew the sound.  We hear them here in southwest Alabama often during the summer; but they have a special memory for me, to.

 

How often I used to sit on my grandmother's big front porch in Memphis, Tennessee, when I was a boy, rocking in the glider and listening to the cadydids mingle with the sounds of the traffic on Buena Vista near Poplar in Memphis.  The house was a big old two-story house; but the attic was also completely floored in and useable for storage.  There was no air conditioning, so I would enjoy going out on the front porch to feel a slightly cooler breeze in the late afternoon and early evening.  But it was also a great escape for a little boy who was tired of all the adult talk and gentle scolding.  Even then, I liked to be alone and think.  The cadydids offered me a kind of tranquility and calm.

 

On that recent Saturday evening, the magic didn't last long.  Those haunting bird calls were gone almost as quickly as they came.  The groceries had to be brought in.  And the air conditioning was a pleasant relief from the sultry and humid out-of-doors.  But it was wonderful to hear the memories in nature, even if only for a few minutes.   The windows in our manse here don't open; so I rarely get the full enjoyment of those sounds and memories.  Of course, when the temperature is hot and the humidity high, I prefer my creature comfort of air conditioned nights.  Still, I sometimes long for the purer, simpler times of childhood and the memories I hear in my yard.