Friday, July 3, 2009

Photo of the week 13 of 39 -- Nostalgia



I had a lot of ideas for the theme this week. I was leaning toward taking a photo of board games. I miss playing board games and whenever I happen to see them in the toy isles of some store, it always reminds me of my childhood. Boardgames, coloring books, Crayola Crayons, blowing bubbles, playing go fish or some other card game and even dominoes all remind me of childhood. I don't think my son has memories of these things and I'm pretty sure my grand kids won't either.

I picked the photo of watermelons for a totally different reason. I was born in January and usually got to have my favorite chocolate cake to celebrate. My sister was born on June 16th. One year, for whatever reason, my father asked her if she would like a birthday cake or watermelon! She said watermelon and a new tradition was born! She was thrilled and I was jealous. There was no way to get a watermelon in January. Dad took both us girls to a local fruit stand that happened to have refrigerated watermelons, so we could pick out one that was already cold! My dad never picked out a bad watermelon either. We were able to celebrate as soon as we got home. We put candles in it, sang "Happy Birthday" and everything, just as if it were a cake. It was the best. To this day, when June 16th hits, I start craving watermelon. To this day, I still have a hard time picking a good one out. The only time I could pick out good watermelon was when I was pregnant with my son. Of course, that could have been because I truly craved them then and it didn't matter if it was a good melon or not, I was going to eat it (after all in February of that year, I craved peaches and the only ones that could be found were three green ones -- to this day, they were the best peaches I've ever had). I would eat a 20 pound melon in 2 days by myself during that time. Watermelon is very nostalgic for me.

Next weeks theme is "adolescence".

1 comment:

pam q said...

OOOO! Crayola Crayons! I still have my box of 24 from the 4th grade. But it was the BIG box that was really cool. Perhaps I didn't get one of those until 5th or 6th grade??

And don't forget the paints in the long metal box!

Love the watermelon story! I can just see the birthday watermelon all lit up with candles.........

I'm sure I would have voted for cake though.