Today, as I dismantled All Things Christmas, I couldn't help but feel a longing for so many things: my youth, my children's youth, my first love (not for him, but for the feelings I had in his presence), my old body (before middle-aged weight gain).
These feelings surfaced because I was on my own with the take-down boxes. The husband and son had left at daybreak for a quick run to Des Moines. Daughters were nowhere to be found (one at work? one out with friends?), and so it was me and the dogs and a flood of memories.
It didn't help that I was posting on Facebook the Top Song of my birthweek: The Rolling Stones' "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction" ... others were doing the same ... and I became infected by those postings. My ADD does not need much help to distract me from any chore or project, and next thing I knew I was watching four or five youtube videos ~ the Stones, Sonny & Cher, Herman's Hermits.
Pretty soon, I changed my FB profile, used my baby picture, which got me to thinking: Did that big-eyed little girl know what she was in for? The dysfunctional family, the screaming mother, the alcoholic father (he was more fun than Sober Mom), the bitchy sister, the flat hair, the crooked teeth, the unpleasant loss of virginity, the heartbreak from loves lost and unrequited relationships, the quick marriage, the pain of childbirth, the heartbreak of parenting.
No, it is a good thing she did not know. Or others like her.
No one would want to grow up.
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