Thank you for the popsicle sticks.......

When I was a kid summers were hotter and longer, fall was filled with dirt bikes and leaves, when it snowed it was deep every time, and in the spring I would fall and scrape my knees because of my easter shoes and the scabs would last until June.  I had my cousins one block away and we would play every day.  It was the best childhood a kid could ever hope for.  I remember riding my bike to Storms to play mini golf, or to Little Vittles drug store for candy, kids were allowed a bit more freedom back then.  I remember my uncle Paul taking us all to city beach and building sand castles.  I remember taking walks in the evenings with my Aunt Jeanie.  I remember my dad sneaking us into movies or into Olympia's swimming pool, I still remember how we got in.  I remember my uncle Pete's pig's in a blanket, and my aunt Kathy's laugh. I remember my Grandpa Pete's gray sweatshirts, even in summer.  My Grandma Renee's casseroles and backyard, and watching StarTrek.  I remember going to my uncle John and Aunt Janet's after Christmas and they would take us on a real life Sleigh ride, it was magic.  I remember watching the little Mermaid with my cousin Sara for the first time.  I remember a lot.....  I remember people I have loved my entire life, some of those people are gone, way too soon.  They all helped to make my childhood absolute magic.  It's so amazing to me the role we play in each others upbringing.  I was very very blessed, not everyone gets to have such incredible fond memories of their youth.  It's all so fleeting, it has all gone way too fast.  When I think back on my mom I remember swimming in the middle of a blizzard in a kiddie pool filled with warm water from the stove that she had set up in our greenhouse.  She would paint our faces full of star bursts for parades and help us decorate our bikes.  She would take my sister and I "bumming" which is her word for shopping.  Mostly I remember her giving me things to help me use my imagination, to help me learn how to "create".   It is a skill that I cherish and am so grateful to have.  My mom would get a huge box of popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue and put them out and say, "build me something".  In the winter we would cover our creations in glitter and hang them on the tree, in the summer we would try to build little houses, or little baskets to hold napkins.  It was so much fun, and I'm convinced that if I had a box of popsicle sticks and glue I would still love to sit down and just create things with them.  It was a gift that has lasted me a lifetime, only instead of popsicle sticks I use two by fours, and instead of glitter I've learned to paint, and instead of rearranging my childhood bedroom, I rearrange my house.  I love my mom so much for the gifts she's handed down to me, and when I think of them, they aren't anything you can touch, it's my ability to dream, to look at things or spaces and know without a shadow of a doubt that I can make something beautiful.  That vision, and passion was a gift from my mom.  It's because of her that I didn't panic at the thought of having to put the house back together again, I didn't panic, I dreamed, and delighted in what was to come.  She's a really good mom.