Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday

I have vivid memories of eating lots and lots of corn-on-the-cob at my Grandparents' farm. Grandma calls them "Roasteneers." I remember one particular summer day when all six cousins and our parents gathered at the farm and worked to "put up" an amazing amount of corn for the fall and winter and spring.

I think I was still less than 10 or 11 years old, as were the rest of my cousins and sisters, when a pickup bed full of corn was unloaded at the back porch steps of my Grandparents' farmhouse. I remember husking and husking and husking. Who knows just how many ears of corn we actually husked, it seemed like hundreds then, but in reality it may have been a bit less?

After we husked the corn, we gathered all of the discarded silk and soaked it in mud puddles in the barnyard. I don't know why we did that, but it made perfect sense to us then. After spending what I'm sure were hours playing in the puddles, we were called in to eat lunch.

Lunch that day consisted of fat hamburgers with bright orange cheese melted on them nestled between two halves of a soft homemade bun. On a plate in the center of the table were cut huge slices of homegrown tomatoes and beside that plate was the corn! The corn was specially cut along the center of the rows of kernels before being served to us kids because my Grandma firmly believed that if we ate the whole kernel we would experience terrible stomach aches.

Oh my what a meal! I can still taste the salt on the hamburgers and the pinch of sugar on the tomatoes and the butter on the corn that eventually dripped down my elbows as I ate.

I realize, of course, that day, preserved in perfection in my mind, was probably not perfect. Our parents probably had to referee a squabble or two. I don't remember whining about being tired of husking corn, which had to have happened. Memory is kind that way sometimes-only highlighting the wonderful and playing down the dim. I have no dim memories of that sunny summer day...the colors so rich with, the barn a crisp red, the corn a glowing yellow, the rich brown of the hamburgers, and the bright green of the corn husks and the contrast of the soft yellow silk in the murky muddy water...

That day will never be relived, nor should it be, for the replay would never measure up to the occasion that lives in my memory. I did however experience a day not long ago whose events softly whispered, "Hey, remember when..." in my memory's ear.

That day, too, involved sun-kissed children husking corn...

...lots of corn silk...

...gobs of discarded green corn husks...

...shiny-kerneled corn awaiting a steamy pot...

 ...and...

...full bellies, enjoying the "vegetables of their labor"!!

I am a long way from my Grandma's farm, both in distance and in life and as much as I would enjoy another day at the farm with my cousins and sisters, I realize that life's way of turning tomorrows into yesterdays is how God intended it. 

If I could but put the brakes on time, I'd never have the awesome experience of linking my yesterdays full of cousins, sisters, family, farm, mud puddles and husking corn to my children's tomorrows which I pray are full of cousins, siblings, family, memories at Grandparents' homes, mud puddles and husking corn. A privilege indeed.

Could somebody please pass me the butter??