The view out my window.

Right now I am sitting on my bed, staring out the window. The temperature of the air as it inflates my lungs strikes me as familiar. Suddenly I'm a child again, staring out the window of the bedroom I grew up in. The familiar scenes of the cul-de-sac where I grew up became vivid. I saw myself playing catch with my father, learning to ride my bike, running around with my siblings as they dribbled a soccer ball or played street hockey with the other neighborhood kids. The air that inflated my lungs as I swung with my mother on the front yard swing is just like the air that I am inhaling right now.

I taste the foods of my childhood too. My grandmothers pasta dish that she cooked whenever occasion allowed. My mothers staple dishes that she so often prepared. I taste chocolate milkshakes sipped out of blue straws that my great grandmother served every summer afternoon I spent exploring the world of her home.

Today I'm looking back and livng every moment from there to now as best I can. I'd do anything to relive those moments. To hear my father speak to me like a child again, singing his famous "I love your little feet" song. Or to have my mother sit with me on the couch and rub my back as I tried to convince her of all my crazy ideas. I want to dance in the living room with my older sister, or "fight" in the yard with my brother and I want to spend my summer working my first job with my youngest sister again. I'd love to sit and hear the comedy of my gradmother as she joked about life in her recliner. I want the familiar banter of family friends crowded around the kitchen table playing poker and laughing relentlessly. I want all of those moments back again so I can truly understand what they meant and how amazing they were. I want to go back and have every conversation again and appreciate what everyone was saying, the ideas they were teaching me. I want to never have raised my voice to my folks or disrespected them in anyway. I wish I made no excuses and visited my grandparents more.

I want the smells, tatstes and sounds of my childhood back. Because the view out my window today isn't comfort, it isn't home. Here I sit today, moved so far forward but I cannot look anywhere but back.

I wear watches with no batteries in them, because I find it hard to carry the reminder of time with me. Because I've had some amazing moments in time, but I can never have them back.