It was our last night in our little town. Our possessions were in a moving van somewhere between this house and our new home — one that hadn’t been built yet. It could have been a terrifying, uncertain time.

Instead, my parents made an adventure of it. That night, we piled onto a big foam mattress in what had been my bedroom. A big bowl of popcorn appeared… and so did a brand. New. Colour television.

This was 1973. Most of the people we knew still had black and white. Our much wealthier neighbours had one of the only colour TVs I’d ever seen. I can still remember pressing my face to the screen, seeing those red, green and blue dots and realizing… this is what makes pictures.

Now I was looking at those same dots on our very own television. I can’t remember what we watched that night. I do remember the excitement, and yet also a profound feeling of peace, safety and closeness to my mom and dad, and to my brothers and sister. Not because of a new television, but because they could create an oasis of peace and wonder in the midst of chaos.

The next morning, we left that little town and drove off to our future. The trip was nightmarish — the car engine overheated constantly, we were all carsick, and we arrived many hours later than expected. It was weeks before we actually moved in to our new house. But it really was the end of the constant moving, and the start of a new, better life for our family.

My parents had pulled it off. And we caught our first glimpse of that new life in my old bedroom, lit by the glow of our first colour television.

The A’s won the game even without my special point, and my dad carried me on his shoulders out of the ballpark, for a while chanting along with a large crowed “We Won the Game, We Won the Game.” I was surprised that it was us who had won, and not just the A’s (THAT was a part of baseball I did NOT know), but went along with it anyway.

My dad died a few years after that and I don’t follow baseball at all anymore, but once in a while I’ll still go to an A’s game, and whenever I overhear somewhere that the A’s won, I still think, Great, We Won!

–Robbie

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Barns, ponds, and woods made up the backdrop of these summers. The funny thing is it isn’t the memory of my father that I remember. The truth is that he spent very little time with me while I visited. What I enjoyed was the freedom that my father’s lack of interest afforded me. That combined with the endless possibilities of exploration is what I remember most from my summers as a child. Exploring an old dilapidated barn, shooting out the windows of an abandoned car with my bb gun. I wandered around aimlessly and nobody questioned it.

Moving on to my favorite memory… I remember when I was about 2 or 3 years old I used to love playing with my grandfather…I remember sitting on his shoulders and pulling his hair when he used to watch the News nagging him to play house with me…I remember holding onto his finger and walking…i remember he held a picnic basket in one hand…we walked a very long way through a lush green and overgrown path to a structure that seemed to look like a castle situated on top of a hill surrounded by a forest…

it is most probably just an old withered tower in the middle of a reserve park which is certainly not as high as I had imagined then or as far… but I dare not visit that place again…my grandfather passed away when I was about 9 and I want to hold on to the magic, the dreaminess of those beautiful moments that I spent with him in that enchating place which is etched in my memory forever…

I remember telling myself to never forget this feeling, and when I got old (I thought 18 was old) I needed to go back and climb that tree again to remember how good it felt.

You’d think a piece of bread with chili and cheese on it would be a pretty simple order.