Well, I am officially a hoarder.
Have you ever watched that reality show? The person featured has a house so full of I don't know what that it is hard to take a step without stepping on or falling down on all the stockpile of junk.
I declared I would never become one of these odd persons, but I have.
We are planning our 55th class reunion, to be held at my house, in late April. So, of course, I am cleaning out, up and over everything. I have been in closets, cabinets, corners and cubby holes from my third floor all the way down to the bottom and I have found things I really did not know I had.
I discovered my stash of "children memories" stuffed in the very backside of a never-used closet and I spent the remainder of the morning reminiscing over each and every piece. I put all the hand-made Mother's Day gifts, old poems, test papers, squished Kleenex flowers and the many school-day pictures of snaggle-toothed, cow-licked hair and just beautiful children right back where I had found them. Some things have been and will always be treasures.
I have dug out memories, stored from many years, and remembered with such exhilaration classmates that I began with in first grade and learned and laughed with until and through our senior year. I have all of my year books from first grade through twelfth grade. And, yes, the first ones are rather worn by now.
My first memory of first grade was that of my mother leaving me in Mrs. Christine Payne's class and that of me chasing her out the door crying with a broken heart. She sat in a desk by me for several hours that day. I remember shot day and how, as you entered the front door, you could "smell" the shots. I remember getting a glass of Donald Duck orange juice to drink after the sharp stick. All I have to do to see, in detail, the little brick school house on the hill with the see-saws, slide and swings is just to close my eyes for a few moments. And most of my forever classmates/friends were right there with me.
I still have the best friend from first grade and we still get together every now and then to just "be."
Several of our graduating classmates live here within in close proximity to each other. Some of us are closer friends than others, but still after all these years, friends.
As I clean for our time together once again, I find more treasures of yesteryears.
I came upon my wedding dress in a back closet, a size 8!! I did not think I had seen that size since first grade. I found my clarinet that I began to try to play in sixth grade. I never did accomplish that.
I even still have one of my prom dresses, fashioned into a dress for my daughter when she was a baseball queen in third grade.
Did I throw lots of my "odds and ends and clutter" away? Of course not. These things are my treasured possessions and my children can deal with all this when I go home.
However, I did throw out the little lizard skeleton I found in my toy room since I do not believe I will ever have need of it.
My grandmother used to make a baked custard that we loved. It came from her recipe she used during war time when things like sugar were rationed. My granddaddy raised sugar cane and turned it into syrup so she use the cane syrup instead of sugar.
Baked custard
4 eggs
1quart milk
1/3 cup cane syrup
1/2 t. vanilla
nutmeg to taste
Combine milk, syrup and salt in a saucepan and heat. Beat the eggs and mix with the hot milk. Pour into a dish and place in a water filled pan and bake at 350 degrees until set.
