Courtney Burkholder

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time in my old hometown of McKinney, Texas. My parents still live there, and though we visit as often as our hectic school and work schedules allow, my time at home is limited to holidays and quick weekend visits crammed to the hilt with family and holiday activities.

But on this last trip, I really wanted to revisit my past. Maybe I’m getting old or perhaps it’s the age of my children, but I’ve begun to think about the early years of my life more and more.

Growing up, I couldn’t wait to get out of McKinney and into the real world. The big city was calling my name, and I boasted of the fact that I would never want to live in a small town. It was fine for my parents, but certainly wasn’t right for me.

But on this last trip, I spent an hour and drove the streets of my past, revisiting old stomping grounds and just remembering. The town has grown tenfold over the two decades since I left, but remarkably, many of the streets and establishments remain just as I remembered.

Rounding each corner brought a flood of memories and emotions: Burke’s Elementary School where I met my best friends for life, Kelly and Liesl; where I experienced my first crush on a boy (Matt Norton), and where I vowed to grow up just like Miss Bray, my second-grade teacher with her beautiful, long blonde hair that fell to her waist.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church brought to mind familiar names and faces I hadn’t thought of in years, remembering making fruit cakes at Christmas time and sneaking the red and green cherries out for a snack, counting colored shoes each Sunday as the parishioners walked forward for communion, and midnight mass on Christmas eve.

This street was where we sat in lawn chairs to watch parades, and this street is where my old math teacher lived, and this was where we would meet for Pioneer Girls once a week after school. Here is where I bought school shoes every year, had my first job wrapping gifts at Christmas and experienced my first of many fender-benders in my great-grandmother’s ’65 Mustang which I drove from the time I was 14.

I cruised through my old neighborhood. It seemed that I could still name the families that lived in the house, on my street. My brother and I would play outside until dark with all the neighborhood kids until our father’s whistle called us home for dinner. Kelly and I would cut through this yard to walk to “town” and buy make-up at Eckerd’s Drug Store. It was all poignantly familiar.

And suddenly I felt sad.

Growing up in a small town was great. It was terrific! Why had I been so anxious to get away? And how could my children ever experience what I did growing up? How could they possibly know everyone and everything that goes on in a city of over a million people?

And suddenly I realized, it’s not the size of the city, it’s the size of the memories we make. It doesn’t matter where you grow up if you have a strong, close-knit family to guide you and close friends with whom to share those experiences.

My kids may never have the freedom to roam the neighborhood as I did growing up, and they certainly won’t be driving at age 14 without a license! But they ride their bikes to their friends’ homes, chalk the neighbors, build forts and secret passageways in the yard, and play in the sprinklers. They drink milkshakes at Olmos Pharmacy, and beg for burgers at Chris Madrid’s. They know the route to their grandparent’s house by heart, and always point out the crabby neighbor who wouldn’t let them take “fossils” off his property one time on a treasure hunt. Every day, they are making memories.

Whether you grew up a hundred miles away or just around the corner, make time to revisit your past. And drag your kids along. They may groan at hearing the story of when you fell out of that tree and broke your arm, but they’ll survive. It will instill in them the importance of building a life and making long-lasting memories. And you’ll enjoy the journey of your childhood from a new perspective. You may even be inspired to pass on some of those memories as I have been.

Tonight, my kids are making homemade ice cream for the first time, and I’m going to try my hand at frying chicken. I hope it will turn out as good as I remember. If not, that will be a memory unto itself!

Now get busy making memories!