I used to sit and listen as she spun her life story,

wide eyed and curious, amazed by everything that was said

older and wiser by scores of years,

She always seemed to know everything

We would walk uptown, black button boots in my mind the way a “lady” wore her shoes

Up the tall stairs to get the mail and back home again.

When you’re small, everything is so grand,

larger than anything you think could possibly exist until you see it for yourself,

A world around you to explore, overwhelming and exciting

Stories of her childhood, when horses were common transportation still, and only a few people travelled more than a hundred miles away from where they were born

Living and dying around those you’d known since birth

Stories of a childhood unfettered by the same rules as mine,

ice cream for a nickel,  the creamery just down the road

running through grass to play down the long gravel road with neighbours, once the days chores were done

Little house on the prairie was real life, not a story that people read.

life has changed from those times, not better or worse,

but I still think of her stories, listening while she spoke and knit calmly in her chair, cat sleeping at her feet.

Glad I was able to enter another time,

if only for brief moments.