May 08, 2004 7:42 P.M.

Now I know what everybody really wants, in my journal!

HOLLYHOCKS!

I received the largest response from all you readers�EVER.

You guys have a streak of nostalgia, which the hollyhocks stirred up. One gentleman wrote of his children making hollyhock dolls when they were little kids. I can remember doing this, but I don�t remember how to do it.

I grew up in a fairly large city, and although we certainly could have had hollyhocks growing in our yard or neighborhood, - that is not where I experienced them.

My mother�s sister was married to a farmer in central Illinois, who bred Black Angus cattle. I spent many wonderful summers, and a few winter holidays on their farm. The memories flood back to me�memories of their turn-of-the-century farmhouse; a mixture of Victorian and Arts and Crafts design with a turreted roof, and a huge porch extending along the east and north sides of the home. There were also two screened porches. One just outside the kitchen door�the back porch (and the one where everyone entered the house), and one on the second story, known as the �sleeping porch�. It was large enough to contain three medium sized beds and was used on hot summer nights in hope of finding a cross breeze for cooler sleeping conditions. It was a slightly more cool place for this little girl to take summer naps. I would gaze out the three screened sides of the porch, and watch a light breeze rustle the leaves of the towering elms protecting the house from the rays of the prairie sun.

There were red barns trimmed with layers of peeling white paint�in need of a fresh layer. The �lane� down the gentle slope from the house out to the �oiled� gravel road, edged along a front pasture where an occasional horse or cow could be seen grazing. And gracing the white plank entrance gate with a sign reading �Cedar Crest Farm�, �was a magnificent row of hollyhocks. Pink, red, and white. I discovered my hollyhocks there in the hot summer sun, just across the road from golden tasseled fields of corn, - bees buzzing all around.

Hallmarks of a mid-western summer for this little girl were: humidity/heat, mosquitoes, flies, lightening bugs, cicadas, watermelon, fried chicken, and �rusty� bare feet. When I was visiting �the farm�, there was also the ice cold, mineral tasting water freshly pumped into a tin cup from the well at the back door. It stood in the center of a wooden platform and greeted every visitor who approached the creaky wooden steps to the porch.

At night, when the blackest of skies displayed every star in the universe and brought them down within reach, �or so it seemed�there was as much an absence of sound as there was of light. An occasional lowing of cattle. The rustle of something in the hedges. And a breeze momentarily stirring leaves. Nightsongs of crickets and tree frogs. Those would be the only sounds, until a distant car approaching on the road grew closer and closer, headlights passing in the black distance, and light and sound fading off into the opposite direction. And there was silence again.

Yes, I understand how you all love hollyhocks. At least those of you, most fortunate to have them as part of your heritage. I mean, look at the memories they evoked for me.

I suppose that each life is an album of memories. It can be opened at any page. It just requires a little something to flip the pages over to the appropriate one. Then if one sits quietly and focuses on the memory�the details will come flooding back. The colors, the fragrances, the touch of air and sun on skin, �the sounds, and you are there again.

What if there is a little embellishment. Perhaps that is how it was. Perhaps that is how it was meant to be.

I love hollyhocks too. I had just forgotten.

(Do you see the bee?)

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