With no time to wait for the prompt, please excuse this bit of sentimentality in lieu of following a prescribed theme today. I’m still in Minnesota. Yesterday we saw my older sister. Today we go for brunch with the childhood best friend of my sister–moved away from our small town over sixty years ago. Impossible.
Meeting an Old Friend
Sixty years since you lived one block away.
In one hour we meet for brunch and memories.
Really my sister’s friend,
but in small towns, so devoid of much else to do,
people still living and moved away
become legends.
Your mother the nightclub singer
with the distinctive whistle that called you home
from behind trees and low in ditches at night,
the rest of us still caught in the thrlll of “ditch ‘em”–
our version of hide-and-seek.
I was the tag-a-long, the watcher
to your games of Tarzan
and the neighborhood plays
raising nickel-after-nickel for a memorial plaque
for the small boy killed from a fall from the tallest slippery slide.
That slide gone soon after, the plaque never installed,
as you were gone to a larger town
and voice lessons translating your pure high voice
to the more studied operatic perfection
of a sweet bottom in a tight girdle.
Still a small town girl at heart
now, all these years later,
you pull our somewhat
off-tune unschooled
voices to you
over years
and miles
to sing
the
old
school
song.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/nightmares/
Actually, as I am ready to walk out the door, today’s prompt to write about a nightmare came through. Since I published a picture and short write-up of my childhood nightmare two days ago, I guess that qualifies. You can read about it HERE. (Look for the picture of the bridge and the words below it.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Beautiful!
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“In small towns, so devoid of much else to do, people still living and moved away become legends.” Even in not-so-small towns. Sometimes, we invent the legends because we want them to be true!
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Absolutely true. In times before video cameras and tape recorders, it was able to believe our memories instead of forming our memories from exact reproductions of the facts!
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Besides, I am a strong advocate of “print the legend.”
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We were actually meeting both Karen, my sister’s childhood friend and Susan, her 3 year older sister. I told Susan that my father always told me to straighten my shoulders and walk like her. Then she told me that she walked with pulled back shoulders because her mother always told her to walk like my oldest sister Betty!!! Ha.
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Thank You for allowing us to drift on these moment’s as a feather floating in a soft breeze
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Thanks for drifting in, baconbits.
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Friends from 60 years ago – so treasured – so many special memories! I recently met up with my first best friend from over 60 years ago. Neither one of has changed. We only look different.
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love this, and noticed immediately that the poem is in the shape of a shapely woman. The specific activities you remember about your friend show how precious she was as a little girl, and then ending shows me how precious she is now, as she encourages your untrained voices to join hers. I do not think this is one bit too sentimental–just plain beautiful.
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Love the words, enjoy your style, sometime’s it feels like enjoying walking beside as you smile
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