Feels Like a Saturday

My childhood of the 1960's, all those years ago, feels like a Saturday in my journey nostalgic. The Cowsill's song "Flower Girl," their purity of song, of smiles. A daydream streams, of running in a field wearing my Keds, a sea of daisies and lavender as wild rabbits sprinted in the timothy. So much, also, of turbulence and change, the long Vietnam War stole thousands of our soldiers from their teenaged American lives, their sisters, our dedicated nurse soldiers- stanched their blood as best they could. My four siblings and I saw the violent demonstrations in our America, anti-war, civil rights marches, in the same nation of Disneyland and the Mickey Mouse Club. Feels like a Saturday, my siblings and I- we spent so many Saturdays in the freedom kids enjoy. Riding our Schwinn bikes with baseball cards in the spokes as the latest Beatles hit song on the neighbor's transistor radio carried to our ears. During our elementary school years, on the last day of school before summer vacation, My father would pick us up right when class let out, we'd ride out to Montauk Point for a week of camping, lulled to sleep at night by the melodious sound of waves in the nearby moonlit surf. We loved the Ed Sullivan show, the zany Monkees band, the campy "Batman" show, and "Flower Power", JFK, RFK, the Kennedy dynasty, the legacy of Martin Luther King, they've been asleep in the solace of the ages. Our Christmases back then, of excitement, and so festive, my shiny new Wonder rocking horse, my brother's fire engines, my sister's Fisher-Price toys, and the gifted singer Andy Williams Christmas shows. My siblings, can you see and hear my thoughts, do you have many memories of our past? Do you recall that historic summer day of July 20, 1969, when we were outside our Massapequa on Long Island suburban home, shooting each other with squirt guns, when Mom and Dad called us inside to watch, transfixed, the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our assassinated charismatic President Kennedy's hope for our astronauts to be walking on the celestial body of the moon became fulfilled. Old Kodak photos of the New York 1964-65 World's Fair, how we loved that magical place, my three crew cut brothers so innocent, the youngest, my sister, in my mother's womb. Four years later, she and I in Easter finery, melted chocolate bunnies smearing our faces. Our tender ages have given way to gray. We haven't been under the same roof in decades, Dad passed away a few years ago, Mom is ninety-two, I haven't seen her in over thirty years. Yet, it feels like a Saturday, despite our separation. America has become angry again. But, oh those Saturdays of our childhood, I keep treasured closely to me. ~