Memories

My earliest memory as a child was napping on my living room floor, sprawled out like a cat on my blanket. The Colorado sun shone though the front windows of our small A frame house, casting a brilliant golden rectangle on the carpet that extended across the room. A handmade quilt, stitched together before I was born, is laid on the floor below me and my favorite stuffed animal is standing guard near by, ever vigilant. A fire silently burns in a monolithic cast iron stove a few feet away and a dim orange glow emits from the small slit of glass on it's front. The stove exists almost like an idol. A constant, friendly source of warmth and mysterious light but also an untouchable, sacred object, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable black folding metal screen topped with golden balls, like sentinels, entrusted with protecting little fingers and hands from burns. The stove is not a of interest now though because I have my blankie, my bunny and the sun. I drift in and out of consciousness, occasionally crawling a little to stay within the narrowing patch of sun before drifting back off.

I would often return to this memory through my school career. After a long day of preschool I would long for my patch of sun and a well deserved nap. In elementary school I would look out on the snow and ice covered playground and want nothing more than to escape back to that most innocent of times, when all the joy in the world was contained in a sunbeam.

As I grew older and moved with my family to another house in another state I lost my nap spot in the sun, but it's spirit lived on. One day after returning home from an early morning spent crouching on the cold ground in the forest, waiting for turkeys to reveal themselves, my long lost nap spot returned. I walked into the living room, wearing camouflage and wool socks. I lay down on the carpet, the sun, high in the sky, shone through a large picture window onto the floor, creating a perfect square of golden light. A dim glow shines eliminates from the glass slit in the cast iron stove and a faithful dog lies nearby, ever vigilant, even in sleep. My face presses into the prickly carpet and I drift off into that sunbeam once again, drooling on the floor like a toddler without a worry in the world.