For school I had to write a story to a classical piece. I wrote to the song Forgotten Dreams by Leroy Anderson. (Music/video is below. Please read slowly.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAN5G_8oSyk

Walking through the old house, I looked back, remembering the times I had played in the parlor with all my toys. There was my old rag doll… and there my tea set, once shining, now lay cracked on the floor with my brother’s wooden car. Oh, how we all used to lay around the fireplace and listen to papa read the family bible every night. I remember the day he asked me to read the daily devotions. I was so excited, for it was a great honor. As I held the holy book in my hands, I read so all could hear, loud and clear.

There by the blackened stove was my mother’s cooking book 105 recipes all her own. She never let out a word to how she made her prize-winning apple pie or her famous raspberry tea. And there was her teapot, cracked and bent. She never would even consider getting a new one. Even when she won one, she gave it away saying that it would take too long to teach it how to boil. I remember the day she took me up in her arms holding the family’s diary and said in her sweet soft voice, “You must never ever let this out of the family. For it has too much history to lose.”

Oh…there beyond is the fountain. It seemed worn out without the bubbling water like it used to have. There is my garden. I remember all the cuts I got from the rosebush thorns. And there is the swing that I would sit on all day, escaping my studies. I felt like I could fly as I swung over the yard! And, uhhh…the bomb shelter. Why couldn’t mama get there before the planes darkened the sky?

She always said that she was proud of me, even when I got a C- on that silly class essay. And there is the wood shed that Emmy and I would go in and tell each other that there was a new boy in town or that one of the girls in school was losing her hair. We shared many secrets in that shed…sorrows and happinesses. And there is the necklace that Isaac gave me on Valentine’s Day. I shoved him in the mud but wore the necklace everyday since under my dress. When we were walking home one day, I let the necklace slip out of my dress just so he could see it.

I will never forget this place: once a bright and welcoming house, now an overgrown tangle of weeds covering up a box of magic. I guess I never let the diary out of our family…for it was in the house of the Montgomerys as it burned into ashes. I have come back, I think, to bring back the memories of the magical place…a place full of forgotten dreams.