This evening, as I was putting my almost three year old daughter with insomnia to bed, I spent a lot of time as a boy staring at the dark waiting for sleep to visit— a trait I feel I may have passed on to my children— so consequently, I’m fairly sympathetic to her plight, and lay down with her in bed until she’s asleep.

This evening we spent some quality time together watching the headlights of passing cars form rectangular window shapes that began on one side of the wall only to travel to the other… slowly at first, and then building speed until it blew into the far wall only to go out in a flash.

A child who couldn’t sleep and the midnight headlight race, caught me in a mental association from my own childhood.

Every summer I would spend a couple of months with my grandmother on her farm. A young boy and a farm in the summer was quite idyllic, but that didn’t mean I feel into sleep any quicker. I slept with my grandma with the window partially open to let in the sound of the crickets and the frogs. We would talk for a long time with her telling me stories about the neighborhood, “Fern’s son is in town, so she spent most of the day baking a cake and didn’t have much time to talk this morning…”

They may have been stories that I had lived that morning with her, but some of the stories were from her childhood and others from last year. The effect, however, was always the same. I would listen with rapt attention from the attention she gave me. We both enjoyed the company. But she would fall asleep too soon, and I would then spent some time watching the great headlight race from passing cars on the walls of her bedroom.

With the winners decided and the races happening less frequently, I would fall asleep.

The next morning, I would slip on my shoes and my grandma would hand me a bowl as I made my way behind the tool shed to where the raspberries were growing. I would fill my bowl and bring it back to the house where Grandma would pour milk and sugar over it. Breakfast.

She had sheep and sometimes cows, and I would spend a couple of hours jumping on the bales of hay in the barn. Other times found me across the street at the creek catching frogs… until some developer cleared out the trees and planted houses.

I would often grab one of the few toys my grandmother had… a cowboy hat and the toy gun, and I would race around and around the house until my grandma got too nervous with me “running like an Indian” and had me come in.

About this time, Grandpa would come home from working in the fields and we’d have some lunch and he would take a nap in his leather recliner. Grandma would ask me to play some quiet game inside. I would start at the bookshelf… most of the books didn’t have too many pictures, but she had a couple of that were more my style. I would tell myself the story by watching how the pictures interacted with my imagination.

After dinner of homemade bread and cooked vegetables (I can’t remember what else she might have made), we watch a little television… usually Hee Haw or the Lawrence Welk Show.

Oh, I guess I can stop regaling my daughter with my childhood summers on Grandma’s farm, for she is asleep. I’ll just get my arm from underneath her, and head over to the computer to type up some fond memories.