Every summer, my parents would send my sister and me to Hamilton Mountain to spend time with family.
My sister wasn't nearly as excited about it as I was.
She loved town life.
I loved country life.
The country meant freedom.
It meant gardens, dirt under your fingernails, fresh air, and being outside from sunrise until the stars came out.
There was one morning ritual I'll never forget.
My great-grandmother was blind.
She couldn't see the sunrise that stretched across the valley outside the house.
She couldn't see the hills that rolled on forever from my grandaunt's front porch.
But every morning, she saw something else.
She listened to Naseberry Street.
The radio would come alive with the familiar voices of the characters, and somehow she never missed a thing. She knew every voice, every twist in the story, every personality as though she had known them all her life.
While the radio played, my grandaunt worked her own kind of magic in the kitchen.
A pot of silky-smooth cornmeal porridge.
Fresh cocoa tea.
Slices of hardo bread waiting on the table.
We'd carry our breakfast out onto the front porch.
From there you could see what felt like the whole valley below us. Morning mist would slowly lift from the hills as the first sunlight warmed the countryside.
We'd eat quietly.
Listen to the radio.
And watch a brand-new day wake up.
As a child, I thought everyone started their mornings like that.
Now I know how rare it was.
I still remember my great-grandmother smiling at the voices coming from that little radio, laughing at characters she couldn't see but somehow knew better than anyone else.
Sometimes I wonder if losing her eyesight made her imagination even stronger.
Because while the rest of us were watching the sunrise, she was watching Naseberry Street.
And somehow, all these years later, whenever I smell fresh cocoa tea or a bowl of warm cornmeal porridge, I'm back on that porch in Hamilton Mountain, listening with her as another morning began.