Childhood Memories
By John Herlihy

When I was a child, my mother served us spam;
The meat sometimes served as a poor substitute for ham.
She wasn’t much of a cook although her cookies were grand;
She dressed spaghetti in tomato soup we could hardly stand.
My father was a hard worker, a pipe-fitter on the rigs;
But we lived in a big old house, the attic floor had spacious digs.
This on the north side of Boston in lower-middle class suburbs;
The house had a wrap-around porch to sit and watch the birds.
We kids always wore fluffy slippers in the house by day;
My father slept after shift work as we settled down to play.
My mother knitted regularly with all the magic of a witch;
She made mittens and afghan blankets with every labored stitch.

Once a week we got down on our hands and knees to wax the floors;
We aired all the rooms by flinging open all the windows and doors.
We learned the value of hard work and how to take care of ourselves;
Often, my siblings and I behaved as imps, but more often as elves.
Now we are old men and women, with one brother already gone;
At an age when we sometimes feel sleepy, with a yawn coming on.
Recently, while visiting my sister, we stopped by to see the old house;
We sat outside and looked on, not a creature stirred, not even a mouse.
Waves of nostalgia washed over me, riding down memory lane by surprise;
Love ones now gone filling me with melancholy that I could not disguise.
Childhood memories still continue to live and sometimes come alive;
Somehow, the family made it thru those bygone years to nobly survive.