I’m walking across a plowed field. Jeans. Boots. A couple of tools in hand. The tire has fallen off the tow-behind spreader and I’m about to see if I can help Bobby get it back on.

It occurs to me that it’s been a while since I’ve cut a path across freshly turned dirt. Oh Lord, the senses start dialing in. My ears hear things. My feet feel the familiar plod. The aroma is not so strong because the field is dry, but I can smell the dirt. The wind kicks up the dust around my boots and carries it away like twirling spirits running across the ground.

It’s a warm day. Plenty of blue sky. My sweat feels good in the shade. The land around me is completely unfamiliar. I’ve never set foot on this place before today. But everything about it is as familiar to me as the veins on the back of my hand.

I needed this day. I don’t know about you, but once in a while I need a day to refresh my soul. I need a day that reminds me of the things from another time in my life.

It might be that I worry about things too much. I know I’m not supposed to worry. I know that I know the One who feeds the sparrows and all that. But things happen that can overwhelm a man. His mind starts trying to work out things that cannot be worked out. Things that are not mine to be worked out in the first place.

Next thing you know, my eyebrows are squeezing the skin on my forehead into furrows that look like this field.

I have no idea how nostalgia really works, but I recognize it when it happens. When I’m not looking for it at all, some sound, some smell, some vision comes along that reminds my brain of things that happened a long time ago. Those things that happened a long time ago carry with them good memories, and typically they are memories of a carefree, or at least an easier time in life.

Like walking across a plowed field to take my dad a wrench he needed in order to tighten a bolt on the plow. Life was good. I was there to help, but with none of the responsibility for the results. Between fetching stuff for him and picking up the occasional rock and carrying it to the edge of the woods, I was free to shoot my BB gun at random Indians hiding behind trees.

The burden of the day, and therefore the weight of life was not on my shoulders.

Carefree is the opposite of worry, which is why our brains, from time to time, will flip the nostalgia switch. It’s like a pressure relief valve built into the human soul.

When I least expect it, I can hear the sound of steel baseball cleats clicking on the concrete floor of the dugout at the field next to Hampton Elementary. I can hear the kids shouting, “Batter, batter, batter…Swing!” I can feel the glove on my hand. I can see the chain-link fence and the concession stand behind home plate. I can even taste the cherry snow cone.

Why does that happen?

I guess because I need it.

I don’t want to be twelve again. I don’t want to start life all over. But sometimes I just want to stand by the fence for a little while, elbows propped on the top rail, and watch the boys play. I want to enjoy their freedom. I want to taste their laughter. I want to see a world where there’s nothing more important in life at this exact moment than making a good throw to first base.

And maybe that’s the point.

The tendency is to make what worries us the most important thing in life at that moment. That trouble, that concern, that other person, that unyielding situation becomes the all-consuming fire that requires every ounce of our focused energy and causes temporary blindness to all the good around us.

But what if that thing that occupies my mind is the same as making a good throw to first base? Maybe that’s what I need to be thinking about as my mind stands by the fence at the old ballfield.

I certainly made a few bad throws. I made Pete work for it sometimes. Sometimes we got the out. Other times my mistakes cost us. But we loved the game anyway. We never gave up on the game. And some days, when I need it most, the game comes back to me.

It doesn’t have to be a plowed field or a baseball diamond. It can be anything, like the steaming hiss of a weight on top of a pressure cooker. The feel of a Blue Horse notebook. The click of a record dropping down to the turntable. A group of kids on bicycles. The smell of freshly cut grass. A tin of Kiwi shoe polish. The flickering of fireflies at dusk.

In those moments, we are reminded that life is full of wonder that far outweighs the worry. The weight that we carry dissipates in the presence of memories that renew the spirit. Those little walks through our past prompt us to recognize that not everything is as perilous as we make it out to be.

It took several trips across that field to get that spreader working again. Trial and error. I walked back to my truck multiple times to get a different wrench, or to see if I could find a “part” that we could make work.

We lost the C-clip that keeps the wheel from sliding off the axle. Then, we lost the pin that locks the wheel to the axle so that the gear box could spin the spreader blades. It was a near disaster.

But it was fun. I was confident we could fix it or at least rig it in some way so that we could finish the job.

And we did it. I dug in my toolbox and found an old pipe clamp that we put on the end of the axle to keep the wheel from spinning off. Marion found a small eyebolt in her truck that we dropped through the hole in the wheel bushing, and we bent the tail of the bolt to keep it from falling out.

I know I can’t fix everything. Sometimes I have to do my best as a father, as a husband, as a man of faith and leave it at that. All the worry in the world will not change the outcome.

So, I welcome the nostalgic moments. They clear my head. They change my perspective like wiping the smudges off the inside of my windshield. In those memories I can see my life more clearly.

The troubles are still present, but they don’t consume me as before. There is a freedom that comes to me when the angsts of life are set aside by the memories of a simpler time.

Those memories shape who I am.

And today, I am a boy in the plowed fields of my mind.