"What is the little good ride?" you may ask

The "little good ride" is a game my dad, his brother Tim, and his cousin Mike used to play at their grandmother's house when they were growing up in the south in the 1950s. They would go to the linen closet and pull out all of the spare pillows and blankets, pile them up high, then climb to the top, slide down, and declare, "THAT was a little good ride!" Not a good little ride, but a little good ride.

As a 21st-century mother, life is moving at a faster pace for my children than it did for my father's generation, or even for my generation. We have so many conveniences and so much technology available to us that because things are faster and easier, the world expects more and more of us. It's odd that because we've advanced so much in the last 50 years, we now have less time than we did before.

Despite growing up in this modern, fast-paced world, I want my children to have some of those experiences of days gone by. I want them to learn to appreciate produce when it's locally grown and harvested at its peak, rather than eating strawberries in October because somewhere in this world, they're being grown and shipped to us. I want them to know what it's like to sleep in a southern home that was designed to allow drafts to pass through and cool it in the summer before there was air conditioning widely available. I want them to camp out in the backyard and sleep on screened porches and play catch-and-release with lightning bugs. They need to learn to shell peas and snap beans and make Nanny's fried cornbread.

I know that I cannot change the world and make it simple and safe like it used to be. But I hope that I can help my children appreciate what they've been given in this wide world, and that I can help them appreciate their roots while looking ahead to their futures.

This blog is about the past...memories of my grandparents growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as my father's stories from the 1950s and 1960s. It's about my childhood growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s. It's also about the present, as it will be peppered with stories of my own children taking place in the here and now. And it's about the future...laying the groundwork for what is yet to be.

Thanks for stopping by.