Looking for my Childhood Behind the Old Church

If you're seeing this post, I'm either at the hospital with Kim or recovering from the birth process of our son Aidan Robert Haggerty.

Today's guest post is brought to you by Shawn Smucker of ShawnSmucker.com. Shawn is also the author of "Building a Life out of Words" which is an AMAZING book that you can download for only $3.99 HERE! Check out his blog HERE. Follow him on Twitter HERE.

Enjoy!

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Photo used courtesy of Creative Commons user 12story 

The last time that man (me) went behind the church, he was ten years old and armed with a dime to extricate fools’ gold from the old macadam. The graveyard provided a perfect hide-and-seek spot. The woods were a mysterious grove he always hoped would lead to Narnia.

In those long ago days he often carried a shovel and a fishing pole down through the woods to the massive creek, digging for worms, casting for trout. In those long ago days the creek and the church and the graveyard were the universe, and God was there. A God who was easy to understand. A God that fit on flannel graph boards and lived in isolated Bible verses.

* * * * *

The man (me) drives his minivan behind the church and turns it off. He stares at the graveyard and wonders how many folks have been buried there since his last visit. His two oldest children clamber out of the back, the side doors crashing open.

“I’ll carry the fishing poles,” his son shouts.

“Can I carry the shovel?” his daughter asks.

The sky is blue and hot. The trees are thicker than he remembers, and the three of them make a new path through old memories. The field that used to line the creek had been pastureland when he was a child, but the farmer made changes, and now a cornfield sits at the bottom, growing right up to within six feet of the bank.

“This is where I used to fish,” he says, clearing the tall grass, using the shovel like a scythe. “This is where your grandpa used to bring me.”

The two children look at the ground, saints hearing that the dirt was holy. They argue over who gets to use which fishing pole. He baits both hooks, and casts them into the water. They splash into currents of the past.

* * * * *

On the way home, he drives up the long farm lane that leads to his boyhood home. Lightning had crashed into the huge oak in that front yard when he was eight. It was the place he and his father used to throw baseball back and forth, the red seams spinning through a green summer. The place he used to mow the front yard for $2 and the backyard for $3.

But the old farmhouse has been split into apartments, and a row of beaten up cars line the driveway where he learned how to ride bike. All the old trees are gone, even the one that had survived the lightning strike. The two-story shed, where he and his friend created an adventurers club and scared away their sisters: gone.

Everything was so different.

* * * * *

Sometimes I try to recreate my own childhood for my kids. I want to give them everything I had, and if I don’t, I feel like a failure. Some of it’s okay, I guess – there are really good things that I’d like to give them.

But most of the time I need to get out of the past. It’s gone. I need to help them create their own childhoods, not relive mine.

* * * * *

The man and his children caught a few small fish that day. Later, after they had lost both lines to low-hanging branches, they decided to walk along the creek a little ways, do a bit of exploring. They fought their way through the brush, along a barely discernible path. Then, out of no where, an opening in the trees. A wide, slow place in the creek.

A beautiful spot for fishing, much more accommodating than the man’s old spot. The three of them stood there for a minute, then decided that the next time they came fishing, this would be their new place.

It would be the perfect spot to cast into the future.