-Megan G.’s favorite childhood memory.
Your contest entries made me too happy to leave them in comments. A few that stood out:
My dad used to make dandelion butter with me, which involved stirring dandelions in a tin cup until it turned to butter. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized a distraction and slight of hand were part of the magic. -Liz
My favourite childhood memory is of my father play-massaging my back after bath. He would spray a little fresh kiddie cologne and do light clapping and topping on my back, arms and legs. -Marta
I used to hide in my grandmothers drained pond from my brother and cousins so I could read. -Beks
My favorite memory is hand drawing and coloring paper doll clothes for my little sister. We would spend hours pouring through the JCPenney’s catalog so that she could choose outfits for me to recreate. -Tamra
Having a breakfast of brownies and decaf coffee from a Thermos on the beach with my parents and little sister. -Holly
My favourite memory was thinking Michael Jackson from his thriller video lived in my furnace room. I was always scared to turn off the lights at the bottom of the basement stairs. -Alison Kelly
I remember playing in a room with a brass bed and red curtains, and watching through the window as a train went by. -Amy Jo
The pure magic my dad would create for my sisters and me on the evenings my mom worked. Like blowing out an egg and filling it with Rice Krispies (in advance so we didn’t see) and then cracking it and BLOWING our little minds. -Katherine
My parents were redoing the walls so after the old paper had been stripped, they let us color all over the walls. We kept a bucket of crayons at the top of the stairs and we would draw big lines as we walked downstairs. -Miss K
My mom waking me and my sister in the middle of the night when we had gone to visit PEI and taking us outside, bundled in our coats and Dad’s mittens over our PJs to watch thousands of Canada geese fly across the full moon. -Ellen
My favorite childhood memory is the fishtank next to my crib. My parent used it as a psuedo-nightlight, the gurgling and warmth and buzzing pump and darting fish would lull me to sleep every night. -Daffodil Campbell
My grandmother had no rules: she threw away toothpaste caps and slept in her clothes. My mom was the type that kept the plastic on things. I loved being so free [at my grandmother’s house] because it always felt like I was getting away with something huge. -Martha
When my three sisters and I made a boat out of a kiddie pool and rowed it down the ditch with a broom for a paddle when the creek by our house flooded. -Tiff
I had this older brother type character in my life, a boy four years older than me who was my parents’ best friends’ son. We both went to this private school about 20 miles away and had a long bus ride together every day. When his 8th grade class read The Hobbit, he’d read it to me on the bus every morning and evening. -Robin
My grandmother transformed the empty lot beside our house into some wild forest/garden. Under one of the trees was what I thought to be a carpet of white flowers. Turns out they were all butterflies. -Michelle
My father used to hook up the hose to the top of the house, so that the water would fall into the pool like a waterfall. We would take turns jumping “through” it. -Natasha
My favorite childhood memory: completing a 2,000 piece puzzle with my Dad. We weren’t very close when I was growing up, he much preferred doing “boy” activities with my brother, but one day he brought this huge thing home and announced we would be working on it together. We cleared off the dining room table and the family ate in the kitchen for over two weeks while we worked on it after dinner every night. I remember exactly what it looked like still to this day. -Faetra
I remember being about 3 or 4 and taking a trip to Maine with my dad. One night he woke me up and brought me down to the lake where we laid on our backs in a row boat and watched shooting stars together. -Megan
My mom running from the car, where I was waiting, up through the dandelions in our yard to grab something else from the house. It’s the only memory I have of my mother walking; rheumatoid arthritis permanently bound her to a wheelchair when I was 4. -Guinevere
On warm summer evenings, my parents would sometimes fill the plastic baby pool in the yard with bubbles and my brothers and sister and I would take our baths outside. -Katie
Sitting on my grandfather’s lap, him asking how old i am, and me triumphantly holding up a single finger. -Jill
In the summertime, I would pitch a tent in the backyard and it would be my “room” for about a week. Since I was a scaredy-cat, I would beg my grandpa to sleep in it with me. My grandpa was a big guy, and this was a tiny kids tent. He slept in it with me every night and listened to my kid-talk and still got up in the morning at 5 to go to work. -Rachel
Hanging out in the garage with my dad, who is something like the ultimate handyman. We’d have to take “cat breaks” so I could sit on his lap in the rocking chair by the wood stove and pet kittens. -Lacey
Playing house inside a circle of mammoth sunflowers that my Mother would plant for us every summer. She’d plant them in a horseshoe shape and then tie the tops together. -KellyBrz
We moved cross-country when I was five, and I drove with my dad while my mom flew out w my baby brother… We ate a two-pound bag of Skittles on the trip. I made him eat all the yellow and green ones. -Kate F
During summer vacation, my best neighborhood friend, Marcie, and I would ride our bikes to the nearby feed store which was the best hangout in our rural Iowa neighborhood because they had a pop machine. we’d dig out some coins and buy two Like sodas, then play Family Feud. That is, I would be the host and try to remember the previous day’s categories and answers and she would play every family member on both teams. -Kate
When we were 9 and 8, my sister and I would steal into the den and dig fistfuls of coins out of the giant milk jug where my parents stashed spare change. This technique supplemented our meager allowances for weeks until my parents started to ask questions about all the new little stuffed monkeys and monkey wardrobes we were acquiring. -Margaret
Since My Grandfather passed today I will leave a memory of him. He used to let us chop wood with him as young as 8 or 9 we had our own little ax and everything. -Charlotte Lunsford
My grandparents came to visit us after a stop in Las Vegas. When they arrived my G-pa called me over (I was about 6) and said he had something for me. He said that while he was in Vegas “he took out a Special Quarter just for little Jilly” and played it in a special Slot Machine and whatever came out would be for me… and from behind his back he whipped around a HUGE paper bag full of quarters. And just as he handed the bag to me, the bottom fell out and they went crashing to the ground just like a slot machine spitting them out! After counting them, I had $67.00 even. -Jill
Catching fireflies with my big brother then putting them in jar and filling bottle caps with granola and water for them. -Mosiphine
I remember racing into the dance studio upon seeing it for the first time at age three and asking the instuctor if we were going to do thiiiiiiiiis? (spinning around and around and around on the shiny tile floor). “Of course” she said. -Anngeedee
Grandpa’s pipe smoke “to keep the mosquitos away.” -ErinTine
When I was little I LOVED riding the school bus to my grandparents house. My grandma was the kind that had a 5 gallon can of flour under the kitchen table; she was always baking something. One particular day it was rainy and stormy and when I got off the bus at the end of the driveway I could smell my Grandma’s homemade dinner rolls. I ran all the way up the driveway. My Grandma met me at the door with a towel, helped me dry off and then I parked myself next to the wood stove with an afghan and a nice hot buttery dinner roll to watch Scooby Doo. -Heidi C.
Pretending not to wake up when my mom masqueraded as the tooth fairy. -Mia
Riding my bike to the little corner grocery store to buy bagfuls of candy. I could shove five atomic fireballs in my mouth at once though. -Amanda
If you didn’t add your memories because you weren’t interested in the contest, go ahead and leave yours below. Yeah. Do it.
Mighty Girl 
This is so lovely. Makes me misty with nostalgia.
The first memory that came to mind was washing the cars with my dad on hot summer days. My dad and I didn’t do a lot of things together and he lost his battle with the bottle when I was a ‘tween but doing that simple chore with him was fun for me.
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These are wonderful.
Every Saturday morning, my dad would make me Eggo waffles and then, before he started his weekend chores in the garage and the yard, he’d make me a magic wand with a star on top out of a twisted wire hanger and tinfoil. I would play with it all week and it would always fall apart around Friday afternoon.
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One sunny day my mom and I were picking cherries from the cherry tree and a tiny little microburst of rain came falling from the sky. Right over the cherry tree. Standing underneath the cherry tree with my mom, a sun shower dripping through the trees, it felt like I was experiencing a moment of magic.
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My Dad had a huge copy of this insane, beautiful fantasy book from the 1920s called “The Ship That Sailed To Mars.”
http://www.labs.net/anaiselise/timlin/timlin.htm
Once when I was ill he read me the whole thing cover to cover. It must have taken hours. Every time his tongue tripped, he would do a funny little whistle and read the word again.
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Love this!
When I was little, my bedroom was downstairs from the kitchen. Every morning my parents would sit and have coffee at the kitchen table together before my Dad would leave for work. The smell of the fresh coffee and the soft murmur of their voices always made me feel safe and loved. One of the reasons I love the smell of coffee in the morning so much – its such a nice sense memory, especially since they are both gone now.
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When I was maybe seven or eight, my friends and I would meet up every day in the spring and summer and ride our bikes down the street. Only we were so fearless and reckless that we would do things like build up a head of steam and then stand up on the seat. I vividly remember doing this yet I cannot believe it. We were nuts but it was awesome being that free from worry.
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This post made my day!
I remember my parents taking us to the drive-in movies with a picnic dinner, soda, and popcorn. My sister and me rode bundled in blankets in the open back of a pick-up singing at the top of our lungs.
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Before the days of seat belt safety, my sister and I would ride in the back of my dad’s construction van that had all the seats removed. We would lie on the floor and look down through the bolt-holes at the street going by.
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This makes my throat feel thick and wonder what my daughter will remember.
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When I was little, my mom would send my sister and I to our grandparent’s house on a farm an hour from the big city we lived in. I got to sleep in “uncle Dick’s room” (he was away at college). I can still feel the soft cotton sheets on that squishy bed and hearing the summer breeze come through the window. From my bed I could see my uncle Tom and aunt Sandy’s house up the hill with the lights on. Every 5 minutes or so a car would drive past on the country highway and in between you’d hear crickets creaking or the cows mooing. There was nothing more secure and comforting in the world. Even now at 40 when I get stressed and can’t sleep I close my eyes and pretend I’m sleeping at Grandma’s house on a warm summer night.
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The time I asked if we could go to the amusement park after work, and my mom said, “we’ll ask your father,” which always meant no, but for some reason he said yes! And we went!
We didn’t have much money, so this was definitely a coup. I’d never felt so powerful. I asked…and I got it!
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My grandmother had a heart valve replacement in the early 80’s, and unlike the porcine valves of today, hers was mechanical. It clicked every time it opend and closed, and I remember drifting off to sleep lulled by the symphony of her creaky wooden rocker, her heartbeat, and the click-click of her artificial valve.
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Playing “vegetable stand” with my Granny. My grandfather had a huge vegetable garden and fruit trees (all behind your standard suburban ranch house). We would pick the ripe fruit and vegetables and then my Granny would buy them from me with her spare change (which she would always let me keep).
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I loved the idea of writing checks when I was a kid, so my dad always gave me one of his little notebooks that he used at work (he was a police officer). I would write out checks to people all the time.
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My father was a college basketball coach. I very vividly remember sitting with my mother in the stands, clutching my eskimo ragdoll. After the game ended my daddy would let me play on the court and just before we left, he’d swing up so I could slam dunk the ball.
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Holding my grandfather’s hand and jumping the waves in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
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Usually when I stayed home sick from school my mom would stay with me, but once my dad stayed home instead, and he made me soup for lunch and brought me his prized copy of Audubon’s “Birds of America” to look at. Twenty-odd years later, he was delighted when I used the post office’s Audubon bird stamps to mail my wedding invitations.
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When I was a child, we’d spend a week a the beach in the summertime. My favorite memory: after spending all morning at the beach, we go back to the beach house. Take a shower. Eat a sandwich. Then find a cot on the sleeping porch to nap or read a book. It was walle with screened windows, as the beach house had no AC and was only cooled by sea breezes. I remember dozing to the sound of waves, while reading old paperbacks.
My entire body just relaxed as I was typing that memory out for you. Thank you. I needed a little mental vacation.
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When I was 3 or 4, my family still had the old faux wood paneled station wagon, and my brothers and I would sometimes clamor to be the ones to sit in the back. One July 4th, we were coming back from watching the fireworks in town, and all three of us wanted to be in the back. So, our parents let us huddle back there, ducking down low to hide from the flashing police lights from the officers directing traffic. The sharpest memory for me is the damp grass and musty cotton smell of the quilt we had lain on, and the thrill of nervous excitement I had at Breaking the Law!
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These are so awesome.
When I was maybe 5 or 6, our television (we only had one – it was the 70’s) completely went out. For whatever reason, my parents did not replace it for 12-18 months. (I’m not sure why there was a delay… there was not an abundance of resources, to be sure, although perhaps they were simply tired of three children arguing about viewing schedules.) Anyrate, we started a tradition of playing board games each night instead of watching television. After a week, no one mentioned the broken television, and we genuinely enjoyed the new activities. To this day, I am very, very good at Monopoly.
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A long time ago, my parents decided to replace the kitchen flooring. It was this nasty brown carpeting type stuff. Mom took the last piece and set it across the kitchen, up against the wall. Then she put my sister and I on the other side of the kitchen. And handed us each an egg and told us to chuck it at that nasty carpet. So I joyfully did so. And my sister, four years younger, chucked her egg…. right onto the kitchen wall, completely missing the old carpet. One memory we will never let her live down 🙂
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love this post! My contribution:
Playing “kick the can” each summer night with the neighborhood kids and my father, who was the only grown-up who would play with us. My father played seriously and didn’t cut us any slack. If he was “it” he always won – no kid ever out-ran him.
One summer night, I hid patiently and then made a sprint for the can and by a milisecond I actually beat my dad! I was the hero of the neighborhood for the entire summer and my dad was so proud.
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When I was very small I lived in farm country in Upstate NY, literally on a farm (just corn and apples and soybeans, no animals, sadly), and used to be able to run back into the woods in the back of our house by myself. I could only do this in summer, because in fall the deer hunters were out in force. Mom and dad, understandably, didn’t want me to get accidentally shot, and it was no fun having to run around in a huge puffy orange vest. In the summer, though, I used to camp out in a deer blind back in the woods, and in the little clearing below that the hunters had made for camping and cooking lunch. There was a break in the trees that looked like a window, and you could peek through it to the soybean field beyond. I called it “The Secret Place.” Seems morbid now, being that people were there the rest of the time to kill animals, but that place was magical when I was 6 years old and had the run of it.
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My dad worked swing shift until my older sister started kindergarten, so he was home during the day. My preschool was down the street from our house, and one day I got sick and he came and carried me home in my alphabet blanket.
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My mom has always been a night owl, so it made sense that she was the kick starter of the Aurora Borealis phone tree. It has to be perfect conditions for those moving lights in the sky: clear and cold and usually late at night. My mom would start the phone tree and then wake my sister and I up so we could bundle up and watch the Aurora Borealis from our front porch in Alaska.
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We were lucky enough to live in Monterey for a few years and every day my dad would pick me up from school and ask me if I wanted to go to the beach for a half hour or be pushed on the swings for a half hour.
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Oh! That’s me!
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Going on an epic camping trip to Yellowstone with my dad and little sister when I was ten. Turning every song from Carole King’s “Tapestry” into songs about buffalos as we drove past them (“Way over yonder, Where the buffalo roaaam!”) Standing outside at a lookout point while it rained, sharing a plastic poncho with my little sis and making silly faces/antics to make my dad laugh, who was videotaping us from inside the warm, dry car. Buying a small buffalo figurine at a local store. Using an entire roll of film (that’s 36 photos) taking photos of Old Faithful with my camera. Laughing in the car until I almost peed my pants.
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I remember my grandmother giving me a bath, in the darkening evening with just the glow of the under-cabinet lights, in the kitchen sink and her playing “this little piggie went to the market” with my toes.
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Such delightful memories – my own childhood had such little joy, save my grandpa who ran a hardware store, smelled like cigarette smoke, bourbon, and gum, lit up like a christmas tree when I was around and always called me Michelley – no one else ever did and it pains me that he never met my son.
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One night when I was about 7, I was getting ready for bed, and I hadn’t bothered to turn the light on in my room. I heard someone call my name, so I turned around, and Smokey, my oversized teddy-bear, was silhouetted in my doorway, talking to me.
“I KNEW IT,” I thought, “you’re real.”
Then, my older brother’s head peeked into the doorframe – he had been moving the bear. We didn’t get to see each other that often, so I was happy even though I knew he had made Smokey talk. But for that one second…!
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Best thread ever! I just bought a copy of the Mars book for my son’s birthday, three seconds after reading that comment.
Every Saturday night, our family would meet up with other families from our church at a local tavern. There was a room with a pool table and video games where we would go hang out while the adults drank and talked in the dining room. When the food came, we’d come back in and eat. My favorite thing was to get a tall table at the other end of the room and eat there with my sister away from the grownups. The burgers came out on a square of wax paper and were pancake flat and delicious accompanied by a tall plastic glass of Pepsi.
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My dad had a home office and looked after me until I was school age. I would wander in to play the “alphabet game”. I found A, he found B, and so on. I was amazed that he was so fast with the next letter, while I would slowly scan for F, F, F… Every time I came in to play, he had to take his document with carbon paper out of the manual typewriter, then line it all back up again after we were done. Sometimes I would ask for 3, 4 games in a row- so much fun! Dad’s been gone two years, and I’m a pretty good typist, but every once in a while I feel out the alphabet on my keyboard, letter by letter, and know I had a good dad.
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I was raised by my grandparents until I was three and moved back to BC with my parents. After that I had little to no contact with them until my 10th birthday.
My grandparents saved for a long while to make the long trip from MB to BC for my birthday (I didn’t know they were coming)
When I woke up that morning, my grandfather and my little sister had walked down the road to a secluded spot that grew hundreds of foxglove plants, picked them and quietly brought them back to the house. Imagine my surprise to wake up to a houseful of foxgloves and my beloved grampa. The best birthday ever – I specifically got married in July so that I could carry foxgloves as my wedding bouquet so grampa could be there with me (he had passed away the previous year)
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When my sister and I (only 2 years apart) were little, my parents would load us up into the station wagon (one with “wood” panels on the side like B. mentioned above) and we’d just go for a drive. It was usually in the summers because I remember riding with the windows down and the feeling and scents of southern nights as we rode and rode for an hour or more. They’d sit in front and talk about whatever grownups talked about, while my sister and I sat in the back-facing bench seat riding backwards and waving at cars behind us. Just before we got home, Dad would always stop at a walk-up ice cream place not too far from the house and we’d all get ice cream cones; my sister and I even got to have the ones dipped in chocolate. Major treatage!
I also remember their taking us to the nearby drive-in movie, and I realize now that it was always a double feature. They’d have us in our pajamas when we left the house. The first movie would be for my sister and me and the second one for them, because before the second one ever started, we’d be sound asleep in the back seat.
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Watching Star Trek (Original Series) with my father.
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My favorite childhood memory is from when we lived in our cabin in the woods. My dad was always building things so there was a lot of excess sawdust. I would mix it up with rocks, sticks, leaves and call it Kakashishi. I think it was a pretend kind of soup.
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When I was very young, finding a penny on the felt like I had won the lottery or unearthed a pot of gold. I would pick it up, bring it to my heart, and shout, clutch it and shout, “I’m rich, I’m rich!” Knowing this, my 12 year old (half) brother hatched a very clever scheme. On the morning of my fourth birthday he woke me up very early, excited to show me that a money tree had appeared in our backyard overnight. Sure enough, when I ran to the back yard I found one of our little trees had “sprouted” not only pennies, but nickels and quarters on nearly all of its branches and leaves. I was so blown away by the surprise and joy of plucking treasure from a tree that it would be many years before I realized the “magic” was my brother. At an age where kids are notoriously self-absorbed and barely interested in any members of the family, much less a four year old sister whom he was forced to stay home and baby sit instead of being able to cruise the streets with his friends, my brother took it upon himself, as a birthday gift to me, to take a portion of his hard-earned paper-route money and spend the many nighttime hours taping coins all over a scrubby lilac. The idea was brilliant, but the timing of his gift was priceless. At the time, I had been enduring some of the darkest days of my childhood. Our mom and my dad (my brother’s step-dad) were in the midst of a toxic divorce, involving the police being summoned to the house on occasion to break up the fighting, and ultimately, my dad ignoring me in order to cause pain to my mom. Though the breakup did not involve his biological dad, my brother, who lived with us full time, was by no means spared the pain of the divorce. Yet, somehow, while the adults mired in their own drama and self-pity, a twelve year old found a way to put his hurt aside in order preserve a little bit of magic in mine.
It will forever be the best gift anyone’s ever given me.
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When we were little and my parents were out, my sisters & I would go to the garage where all my mom’s high heels were kept and have a fashion show. We would strut up and down the garage and pose every few seconds. My favorite shoes were the red high heels.
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Making “salad” out of all the weeds in the yard and my dad pretending to eat them. His favorite was the octopus weed.
He also let my sisters and I put barrettes and ribbons in his beard when we were little. He’ll probably let our new niece do it to him, too 🙂
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This was such a lovely post to read while I was on the exercise bike. 🙂 Thanks so much for posting these wonderful memories.
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I don’t remember how old I was when we took a family vacation to St. Louis from West Bend, Wisconsin. On the way there, we all took turns reading Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, out loud, to each other, to pass the long car ride. I think it was the summer between 5th and 6th grade.
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We lived in New Mexico when I was younger. Whenever there was a thunderstorm at night, my parents would leave the garage open, and we’d sit in the trunk of our car wrapped up in blankets watching the lightening. I still love thunderstorms, and I still remember how rain smells in the desert.
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My favorite memories are of staying with my grandparents in Buffalo. I slept on a cot in the dining room while my grandma and grandpa, mom and dad and my uncle would watch hockey on Canadian TV with the old dial control for the TV antenna. When I got up in the morning, my grandpa would be in the kitchen with the newspaper and the percolator. The kitchen smelled of old people, gas stove, coffee and Chesterfields. He would drink coffee and smoke, picking the loose tobacco bits from the tip of his tongue.
This is a great post and thread! Thanks everyone.
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When I was tiny and my brother had just been born, my family started looking at houses in another suburb of Dallas to be closer to my dad’s office. This meant endless days of “house hunting” and walking through endless empty houses to find one they wanted. One evening, after they’d planned on going house hunting, my mom “had a headache” and asked me to go with my father. I fell asleep on the long drive to the new housing area and when I woke up, my dad had driven me to Six Flags. We rode ride after ride and I especially remember sitting and having root-beer floats. That drink has always reminded me of my father and of that day- I’ll make them for him when I’m visiting home and we have an afternoon alone.
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When I was 3 I “ran away” exactly one house down and across the street from my house. I dragged a half-inflated rubber dinghy and got the dog to follow me. I went completely buck naked and my neighbours (kindly elderly ones) brought me home after my long journey…
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Being very small and falling down the stairs — physical coordination’s never been my strong suit — and my dad kissing me afterwards and saying “I thought we were going to have to get a NEW punkin!”
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I picked out an old cookbook at a garage sale with my mom when I was about 6 years old. Once we were home, she let me pick out a recipe that we could make. I chose a recipe for “hot cakes”, having no idea what they were. We stirred the ingredients, followed the directions step by step, and as we poured them onto the frying pan, I realized that our mystery recipe was better known to me as pancakes! My mom made the whole experience a great discovery of reading, cooking and learning.
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I love this.
My aunt and uncle live in West Texas, and when I was little they had a giant galvanized tub filled with ice cold water and cans of soda in their backyard. My cousins and I spent hot summer days hanging around this tub in our bating suits, and sometimes completely naked, drinking sodas while our parents sat in lawn chairs telling stories.
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My sister and I used to gather all our barrettes, hair clips, and pony tail holders and put them all in my dad’s hair while he read. We inherited our naturally curly hair from him and would comb it out to a giant Afro first too.
Also, my dad was a preacher and we lives next door to the church. Frequently indegent men would come asking for food, money etc. My mom always saved plastic food containers sour cream or cottage cheese came in. She would give them our leftovers in those containers and they’d thank her for the meal. Theyd sit on the church steps next door to eat and rest before making their way back to the highway. No one was ever mean, threatened us, or tried to steal. We later heard our home and church was known for such kind acts which is why thy sought us out. What an honor.
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