Hunting the wild past

While I've never understood people who wistfully sigh over their high school years, "I wish I were 16 again", that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a bit of nostalgia.
For the past three hours I've parked my ass on the couch to relive the music I grew up with through the magic of VH1 "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s". Sometimes, I keep the XM radio on Fred (channel 42) so I can hear some of the stranger offerings of the era. I will actually admit that I've forgotten it's 2006 for brief moments. Though my hair has never gone back to the platinum mohawk of my youth.
These songs evoke a completely different kind of nostalgia than the lullabye I ended with yesterday. THAT was when I was young. And though I was surrounded by the trappings of the 70s then, whenever I went to stay at my grandmother's house it was like traveling back to the 20s and 30s, when she was young.
She hung the clothes on the line outback, kept leftovers on plates and used extra plates as the covers. No plastic wrap or tupperware. A television for Saturday mornings and Captain Kangaroo, but that was it.
I find myself missing an era I was never even close to living in, and the lullabye "Evening Comes" is part of that.
There are CDs out with lullabyes to play for your baby, and there are some mighty nice lullabyes too. But what mother sings her own child to sleep now? There is still snuggling and perhaps the sweet whisper of a mother's voice in her child's ear for comfort, and that is its own lullabye. A sound produced to create a comforting and relaxed state. A ritual meant to transition from the day into the night, and make the journey to sleep easier.
I don't know if we asked for the lullabye. I wouldn't be surprised though. It was part of what made the vacation at the quanset hut the wonderful escape it was. Without that song the evening breezes and other night sounds that would sneak in through the screened in porch would have been somehow more alien. But the song made nature part of going to sleep. Because as I was drifting off - thinking of a trip to the park tomorrow where my grandfather would again tell me the story of how the swans would chase my mother everytime they took her to the same park when she was a child - the rest of the world was drifting off. Particularly the crows which waited everyday for my grandfather to bring a pie tin of scraps over the hill for them. I imagine they dreamed of the ham shavings and spots of sun in the back yard while my grandmother sang in her scratchy voice. We all knew it was time for going to bed.
I would never wish to be 5 again. I am quite happy to be a few years beyond that. But the memories never fail to bring me back, and forget again that its 2006 in the city, where crows wait in the park for whatever they can find.