by Kathy Panicola

Created on: April 03, 2009   Last Updated: April 04, 2009

Looking back on childhood brings a smile to my face, being so young, so innocent. Your biggest responsibility was to make your bed before you went out to play, or for me anyway, being home in time to eat lunch with my dad. He came home everyday at 12:00 PM never failed, winter, spring, summer, fall. Same time everyday. He worked as a mechanic at the corner station, and sometimes he would pick me up in the tow truck and take me to the local junk yard, to drop off a car. He would ask me to go with him, (and of course I always said yes) I remember how excited I would be, because on those days I had real responsibility, it was my job, my very important job mind you at about 5-6 years old, to watch the rearview mirror on the passenger side and make sure that the car didn't fall off the back of the tow truck. And yes success every time I want with him.

I can't believe what happiness telling this story is giving me at now 43 years old, I feel like that 5-6 year old little girl again. I have always looked back at my childhood with a smile on my face. I remember swimming, and looking for four leave clovers, at my grandmothers house. Picking home grown grapes at my great-grandmothers. All my Aunts, Uncles, and cousins coming over to my house, all us kids playing in my life sized doll house my grandfather built for me, and my sisters one summer. Life really was grand back when I was a kid, and if I could do it all over again I would. I say that now, but I remember becoming a teenager, and I couldn't wait to be an adult, what I fool I was, not cherishing those moments as a kid, in such a hurry to be all grown up, and now that I'm all grown up how I miss those days.

The days when my big responsibility was to make sure that car didn't come off the truck. No one told me that some day that car would be mine and I'd have to pay for the repairs. I miss playing catches fly up, and freeze tag. Going camping every year on vacation. Life was so good back then, so simple. But on the up side of being a "grown up" is that because of my wonderful childhood I can still be a kid on the inside, I take my kids, and my sisters kids, and I have as much fun as I possible can and my hope, my wish, is that when they look back on their childhood it will put a smile on their faces the way my childhood does for me. So as much as we all miss our childhood we in some ways as adults relive it through the kids in our lives.

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