WHAT HAPPENED?

Recently I was at a family reunion for TLW’s (The Little Woman) clan. Although not everyone showed up, this is a big country after all, enough of them did to make it a reunion. Included were some cousins along with her nieces and nephews and their children. We adjourned to a meeting room in a hotel where most of them were staying, and as we sat around the tables, a thought that hit me, also hit TLW!


What happened?

Yes, that was the thought. What happened to those days where we discussed school districts, raising children, and work? What happened to those days when we discussed Nixon, and Watergate, and the Viet Nam war? What happened to those days when we discussed the oil embargo, and hijacked airlines to Cuba? What happened to those days where we discussed our parents, and their retirements and their illnesses?



What has happened?

As I sat there, our nieces and nephew’s children ran about, playing and giggling, and the adults at the table were seasoned, grayed veterans of life’s lessons, discussing Iraq and Obama and the cost of prescription drugs and recent operations. They discussed retirement and ailments, something we would never have thought to discuss 35 to 40 years ago! We all did our best to look like we did 40 years ago, and some of us did and some of us didn’t, and some of us didn’t even bother.




The people I saw resembled people I once knew, but strangely we were all more comfortable with each other now then when we were together 35 to 40 years ago!
Our parents were in the past tense, as is our lives now. We are all more tolerant then we once were, and life seems to have claimed our youth, but not our spirit.

The once happy days of our youth, those comfortable days when Mom and Dad were alive, giving us small lessons in life, are now the days we lend to our children, and then we too will be the past forever.

I guess life is bitter sweet: you can’t go home, because home does not exist. So we make our own homes, and wait.