Memories

... are funny things.  How at such a moment, this clear memory of your childhood enters your head, unexpected and unwarranted, and yet there it is. 

I think best of course I remember watching the movies of my sister and I, dressed up in old lace petticoats, dancing to who knows what, on the patio of the house in Fort Collins.

That really is the first house that I actually remember.  Although there were movies that showed some of the earlier houses, I actually can feel myself in that house.  I can remember the feel of the sun as I played on the swing set.  I more or less remember my father putting up the fence, and when we poured the cement for the patio.  I do remember the shelving in the lower level, that my sister and I used for our Barbie houses, and the feel of each of the rooms in that house. 

I think that is my favorite house that we lived in as a family, and when I Google mapped it, I was quite surprised at the changes in how the house looks now compared to when we left it in the late '60's. 

Time does that to us tho.  Somehow the last thing that we saw is how we expect things to be, and they are not at all like that now.  The Silver Maple has grown into a huge tree, the neighborhood has aged, and expanded.  Changes not only in how we perceive things, but how they were.  Young eyes are rarely as accurate as we think they are.

Which brings me someone to the present.  Perception, as it is, not perhaps as accurate as we think it would be.  We look from the inside out, not seeing the whole picture.  It is always much easier to see the flaws in the world around us than it is to see the flaws in the world inside us.