Like Sands Through the Hourglass…

The sweat rolling down the center of my back made me shift a little to the left to catch more of the breeze coming from the fan in MaMaw’s room.  It wasn’t a cool breeze just a movement of air that continued to grow warmer as the morning rounded the corner to afternoon.

Those were hot humid summer days spent with my MaMaw and PaPaw in Arkansas. I can remember sitting by MaMaw in her bedroom listening to the constant whirring of her sewing machine.  Her, like a queen on a throne, reigning over her kingdom of thread, patterns and material with her scissors, measuring tape, thimble and pins at the ready to do her bidding.  It was almost magical seeing pieces of material transformed into something wearable especially when she was making clothes for me or my dolls.  Or I was in the garden with PaPaw checking on or picking what was growing until it got too hot.  Then it was time to go sit in the swing under the shed and drink a Co-cola while listening to him hum an unrecognizable tune as he tinkered on something at his workbench.

Those days bring memories of hanging clothes on a clothesline in air so thick they were still damp when they were ‘dry’ and having to dodge big fat catawba worms falling from the branches overhead.  I remember the heavy sweet smell of jonquils and green things slipping in through the open windows during the day along with the heat.  I also remember the hot seemingly airless nights lying on once cool sheets and praying for a breeze or any movement of air at all.  I’d listen to the night sounds whirring, buzzing and humming outside until sleep finally came only to wake up with pajamas sticking to my skin damp from the humidity that rose along with the sun.

And I guess those hot summer days spent with my grandparents are the reason I have fond memories of soap operas or ‘stories’.  My MaMaw watched her ‘stories’ everyday, and everyday at that time we got to turn on the window unit in the front room.  The ritual would begin by closing off the front room from the rest of the house, and then the precious little AC unit would be plugged in and turned to High.   We would go to the kitchen to fix lunch and return to a blissfully cool oasis for at least the next hour and a half.  MaMaw would turn on Dialing for Dollars, sit in her chair with the phone, pencil and paper and wait for a phone call while eating her lunch.  I would eat, play and rest in that air conditioned retreat while  Another World droned in the background, and when MaMaw started watching Days of Our Lives, the cool air would last even longer, although the unit would be turned to Low.  Even PaPaw would venture in, take his chair and doze.  Soap operas don’t have the best reputation, but they certainly had a place in my younger life.  If not for MaMaw’s ‘stories’, I might have never survived summer days spent in sweltering heat at MaMaw and PaPaw’s house.

All this came to mind because of the phrase, “Like sands through the hourglass so are the days of our lives.”  A phrase that opened the soap opera, Days of Our Lives, and that phrase came to mind because of time, or really the passing of it.  I am a little nostalgic right now because of my youngest being a senior in high school and three days later my oldest turning 22.  Also being nostalgic from reconnecting via modern technology with lives that I never thought I would see or hear from again; dredging up memories that life has built upon or buried.  No regrets, no going back, not even wanting to.  Just wistful moments and sweet memories of family and friends.

While at MaMaw’s house, I had no idea what that phrase meant, but now thinking about it, it seems almost profound.  An hourglass, a life, seemingly so full, sand and time moving slowly until another glance later in life shows just how fast that durn sand is moving!

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