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Psychologists often recommend patients facing troubling circumstances or difficult decisions to focus on pleasant experiences or good memories to reduce the stress of the situation. I have many great memories that I have visited over the years to calm my nerves or make me feel a sense of peace and comfort.

My mom was raised on a farm. Her family was land-poor. She was raised without running water or electricity. By the time I came along we had a little more, but not much. Until I was six years old, we lived in a small two-bedroom house that my Dad was born in. The only heat was an oil-fired floor furnace in the dining room. It kept the dining room hot, but the rest of the house was cold, especially the bathroom that had been added onto by closing in the back porch. The floor furnace would burn your feet if you walked on it barefoot. We had no air conditioning, and the house was cooled in the summer by a large window fan which blew air out the back bedroom window and sucked air in the rest of the windows.

I slept in the front bedroom, which had a window and a door that opened to the front porch. One of my first memories is of lying in the big poster bed and watching the window shears dance into the bedroom. I was cooled by the night air and comforted by the peaceful movement of the shears and the lack of any other burdens of life. I was perfectly contented.

Another memory was formed in the same bedroom. I was scared by something I thought I heard and called for mom to stay in bed with me. The noise that bothered me was the beat of my pulse in my ears. Mom told me, in a comforting voice, that the noise was from angels walking on the roof. She also told me that angels walked on her roof when she was a little girl, and those same angels were still on our roof to protect me from anything that might hurt me. At times, I still hear my pulse in my ears and am comforted by memories of my mom and the angels walking on the roof to protect us.

Without air-conditioning summer days were stifling. To get some relief, many people would go to town just to walk around stores that had good ventilation or, better yet, were air-conditioned. I first noticed air-conditioning at about the age of five in the front lobby of the JCPenney store in Corinth, Mississippi. I still remember how cold the store was and thinking how great it would be to have that cool feeling all the time at home. I’m not sure I have ever been that cool again.   

We shopped for bread at the Wonder Bread Day Old Bread Store on North Polk Street in Corinth. The store carried day old bread and pastries. Mom would generally tell my brother and me that we didn’t have money for the sweets. However, one day she gave us both a nickel and told us we could get whatever we wanted, so long as it only cost a nickel. I passed on the Twinkies and picked a cake with light green icing in a cellophane wrapper. It was wonderful. It melted in my mouth. I still compare anything good to eat with the wonderful flavor of that green cake. I don’t think, after all these years, I have ever tasted anything that good.

We moved to a new house when I was six. We were really uptown, with central heat and air-conditioning (although the heating unit didn’t work very well). However, it was cool on those summer days. We had a television but only received two and a half channels, since we could only get Channel 13 out of Memphis about half the time. With little television, we listened to the box radio on the night stand in mom and dad’s room. Nothing was better on a hot afternoon or early summer evening than lying on the floor in front of that old radio, listening to the St. Louis Cardinals on WCMA, our local radio station. The distinctive voices of Harry Caray and Jack Buck are still in my head. By the way, the Cardinals beat the mighty Yankees to win the 1964 World Series.

Finally, it seemed like mom was always in the kitchen cooking something. Our kitchen was very small, with a table and four chairs tucked into a corner. The chairs wouldn’t fit behind the table so if we were all together, which was not often, mom would eat standing up beside the stove. Mom always made sure we had something to eat. It was what people would call farm food today, but it was good and filling. All the kids in the neighborhood were always welcome at her table. Having someone taking care of the basics in life was a wonderful life lesson for me, and I enjoy remembering how good the little things of life are.

I hope you have similar memories that take you back to the good places and the good people in your life.

Have a good month.