last spring.....

sometime in april i think..... the highly honored for his music talent vince gill and his lovely wife amy grant rolled into town...vince was to perform a benefit concert at "Grover Cleveland Elementary School" to raise funds to refurbish the old auditorium.... i remember hearing about this concert and thought how wonderful it would be to see vince...in our old school auditorium...the place where it all began.... the tickets were quite pricey....$500 each....whew!!!

one of our elementary classmates sent out emails to as many of us as he could find.... i began second grade at cleveland....a late comer compared to most... miss williams was my teacher.... the nicest woman...with dark loosely curled hair....glasses... she always wore the shirt dresses like mrs. cleaver on leave it to beaver.... the first email...from mike was letting us all know about the concert in an effort to get us back together...as well the opportunity to see vince in concert... the auditorium is rather small seating no more than 300 people... a few weeks later a reminder email came...and then another..... then one day.... i received an email saying...kelley... chip has some extra tickets and would like you to be his guest... apparently i was not the only fortunate cleveland kid to get this email....

the night of the event...20 of us....were back together in our elementary school.... the concert was an emotional experience....seeing kids...i had not seen since childhood...in the halls of the building some spent 7 years in...me 5 ....vince gill performing on the stage he had performed on so many years ago....at that time the stage seemed so large...swallowing up vince...as he sat in the center on a wooden chair.....playing his guitar...singing "house of the rising sun" .... oh those were the days.... that night vince performed the song that got him on the charts... a song popular when he was in 8th grade.... "amy" by pure prairie league.... he played and played...singing song after song...asking the audience for requests...telling childhood stories.... only those of us growing up in the sixties...going to that school could fully understand.... laughing... crying... he closed out the evening with the song we had heard him sing so many times before..."house of the rising sun"... there is no way to fully describe this night....

the next night.... we all got together at chip's house... telling stories from childhood...looking at old photo albums.... even though everyone had aged....they all looked the same...all acted the same... they were still the kids i had played chase...kickball...and soccer with.... thrown water balloons and snowballs with.... the memories came flooding back....like it was only yesterday....

that night brought us back together.... since then...several emails have been exchanged... with the holidays approaching... some coming home.... a reunion lunch planned for today....the only time available on every ones busy holiday schedule.... flashing back... to days when galoshes were fashionable....snow fell in feet rather than inches... girls could only wear dresses to school...pants were not allowed...white sparkle lipstick...april rain brought may flowers... silly things i remember.....people didn't seem to complain as much..... people seemed to enjoy life so much more.... perhaps it was being a child... protected from the heartaches...and struggles....

i find myself less excited about getting together again... hearing woes of life...complaints of being 50... whining about this and that.... nah.... i think i'd rather....remember the way it used to be... not a care in the world....the crush i had...the first kiss.... running as fast as i could.... jumping rope....in the rain.... hide and seek.... vince...and his guitar... singing....house of the rising sun.....in my brothers room...night after night....