MARKING MILESTONES

Interestingly, to me at least, whenever an anniversary comes around that I do not reflect on the past and look to the future with some anticipation and excitement. As a child, the passing of each birthday was a milestone, but once I married, I corralled all the past events and spent my wedding anniversary noting and remembering and planning for the next year. To me a wedding anniversary has more significance than New Years Day, because it radically changed my life, my scope and my anticipations.

This being our 36th wedding anniversary; is no different than the last 35 were, and I look back on the early years in particular, crowded with people and faces long gone, events that are somewhat fuzzy in details and places that I wish I could go to once again. How sweet the memories all are, yes, even the bad ones, because they brought out the good in the people that surrounded us during those times, and with that identified those people as friends, neighbors or relatives as true friends first.

I’m thinking of this blog as chronicling all the events as I know them for my sons and putting them down in this kind of format that they can have and add to or just keep as a remembrance of their old man and how they came to be of their opinion based on my history. Although they have heard the stories, know the players and have witnessed some of the events, they really don’t have the context. I wish I had that context from my Dad, it would explain my attitudes and convictions to me better. I want them to not judge me, just understand why I am who I am, and they can better understand themselves.

I think it is important to give your children something that has meaning, putting aside all the moral lessons we teach either deliberately or inadvertently, all the material gifts and inheritance we shower upon them and they on us, and give them something that they can appreciate, their personal history before they were even born, their heritage. I don’t know if I’ll ever live to see grandchildren, but if they do come, they too will have a great way to understand their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and perhaps add their life’s portion to the story.