Sepia toned prose

I remember summers as a kid being golden. Not just fun and the good old days, but the pictures in my memory are colored with the gold of a July sunrise. That hour or so after the sun is over the hills and the morning is part way between the cool of night and the heat of the day. The sidewalks were welcoming to children in sneakers and on bicycles. Those were the days when we could run and run and run around the neighborhood without any direction or destination.

I remember the empty farm land that is now a housing development. I remember seeing horses grazing in a field next door to our elementary school. There was another little girl who would stand at that back fence with me and guess their names. I remember running through old farmland ruins and finding the place where they slaughtered the pigs and looking at the various bones that were left. We would pretend it was an archeological excavation. The grass that grew up around faded fence posts and sun bleached chicken coops was yellow and so was the sage that was taking over. Everything was forgotten and waiting to be discovered. Again, that golden hue was around it all as the day heated up and the beetles started buzzing.

Memory is a funny thing. I've seen sunrises and I've been up early in the morning, but I haven't seen the golden mornings of youth since. Maybe I'll try looking again this summer. If I don't have much luck, maybe I'll try looking through my daughter's eyes.