Bombs of Hope

02.24.2011

In the summer of 2004, I had an internship at the Smithsonian’s National American History Museum in Washington, DC. Very soon after I arrived, former President Ronald Reagan passed away and I got to view his funeral procession down Pennsylvania Avenue where his casket was taken to be viewed in Congress’s rotunda. I wanted to go to the viewing but once I caught wind that the wait could be up to 16 hours long, I decided against it. I figured it was enough to be present for the procession. What I didn’t expect, however, was that the moment that would be embedded in my memory from that day would not be the moment I saw Reagan’s horse-drawn carriage ride by. It’s what happened during the 21-gun salute that is forever burned into my mind.

The Air Force conducted its “lost comrade” plane salute followed by a 21-gun salute done with an actual cannon which I quickly realized was about 100 feet away from me. Upon the cannon’s first fire, those of us standing nearby jumped out of our skin. I can’t begin to explain the noise and the power of the cannon; it scared me shitless even though I knew it was firing off empty shells.

I stood there and began to weep surprised at my own reaction but thankful that it was a funeral since I could easily mask the real reason for my tears. With each fire of the cannon, the reality that there are people, children, that hear this kind of sound every day surfaced in my mind. The Iraq War was well under way by this time and I couldn’t help but think of all the children that witnessed cannons and other military equipment aimed to kill (on both sides).

We are so spoiled in America even with all the daily struggles we have, with all the poverty and selfishness that surrounds us. We are content to go to war as long as it’s not in our back yards. I think about the horrors that my grandparents witnessed during WWII and other atrocities witnessed during that same time period. There’s no denying that humans can be kind, thoughtful and heroic but there is also such a dark side to humanity. It breaks my heart that there are many children who get exposed to that dark side at such an early age. We spend so much time in America focusing on the well-being of children and making sure that they have a childhood that, I think, we take it for granted. I hope, and I mean deep in my heart I hope, that the world experiences more kindness and that more children reap the benefits of that kindness instead of more bombs, guns, and death.

Contemplating Life Without Children

02.21.2011

I think I’ve written about this before but I recently revisited the question, “How do you feel about not having kids at all?”

In my 20s, I would’ve offered a definitive answer that it doesn’t bother me. A decade or so later, I’m on the fence sometimes leaning in one direction and sometimes in the other. But the one thing I can definitely say right now is the notion of not having kids scares me more than having them because projecting into the future about 20 years it saddens me to see only Rob and me in the picture. I know that friends can become family and you can have an active life without children. I get it; I understand because Rob and I have lived such a life for 10 years now.

I was thinking about the show Brothers & Sisters that, I have to admit, has become a ridiculous soap opera, but I love the cast and so I continue to watch. But I was thinking about it today because I was thinking about Sally Field’s character and how now, with her husband dead, she lives her life day in and day out and how much more it’s fulfilled with her children. It’s hard to explain. I’m sure she’d be happy without her children (because she wouldn’t know otherwise) but there’s something about having her kids to lean on in difficult times or having her kids laugh with her in good times.

I also know that you can’t predict what kind of a relationship you’d have with your kid. I’d say my relationship with my mom (now) is pretty good. But she’s no longer in the States so the memories we create together are very few for the remainder of her (or my) life. I’d like to think I’d develop a good relationship with my kid(s) and I certainly want to be around in their adult years and see their kid(s) grow up. Jobs, career, money, cars, houses, etc will always be there in some form or another but what solidifies one’s existence is family. I think about the childless couples and wonder when a spouse dies, what’s left?

If I Could Save Time in a Bottle

01.31.2011

One month of this new year…gone. Amazing, isn’t it? I sometimes wish that I could experience the world without time. I remember reading that Einstein said that time is relative. Have you ever found yourself feeling like time was dragging and other times, you look at the clock, it’s a certain time and in what seems like a blink of an eye, 5 hours have gone by? Einstein would use that as an example to explain how there really is no such thing as “time.” And I agree. Humans made it up. Once upon a time, the US was all over the place with the clock. Each state tracked time differently but it wasn’t until the transcontinental railroad was built that government unified time.

I think it’d be quite freeing to live in a world without time. Then it wouldn’t be so scary to see its passage on children. I remember adults telling me how fast I was growing up and I couldn’t stand it. I figured they had nothing else to say to me other than lamenting their own lost youth. Now I’m on the flip side of that coin and, dammit, if that’s not how I feel. It’s not like I necessarily wish to be young again. I just wish I had that time. Imagine if we didn’t live in such a linear society... There’d be no “Wow, where did the last 30 years go by?” It would just be. I think we’d be more inclined to live each day in the moment. Perhaps that is a reason people have kids. Small children have no concept of time and each day is filled with wonder. We adults lose those qualities somewhere along the way and our children remind us of the beauty of the moment. And of course, it is those moments that we capture in our minds that instantly become beloved memories, just like yesterday, just like today and just like tomorrow will be...

Reminders

01.07.2011

I recently was sent photographs of the kids I used to baby-sit and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a picture of the boy for whose birth I was present. I stood in my kitchen and just stared because I couldn’t believe that 13 years had passed. I know it sounds cliché and the passing of time only gets faster with each year we witness, but it was just hard to accept.

I’ve been told often by someone I know that children are ours not only temporarily but really just as a loan. Yes, they are ours biologically and we have that tie to them, but… they really aren’t. We bring them into the world but we don’t own them. From the beginning the child experiences life on their own with his/her interpretations and understandings so, ostensibly, we’ve never truly had them.

The pictures of the kids that I used to baby-sit reminded me how precious is our time and how important it is to value your loved ones. We don’t get yesterday back and we don’t get to relive today. I think children are part of that reminder.

Childhood Fond Memory Snacks

01.06.2011

We all have fond memories from our childhood and a lot of mine are closely intertwined with food. Shocking, I know.

So to indulge in the sweet nature of narcissism that is blogging (pun intended), I’m going to share some of my favorite childhood snacks.

Frosted Animal Cookies – For my 9^th birthday, my mom said she’d buy treats for me to share with my classmates. As a grad student, she didn’t have a lot of money so I knew I had to pick my treat wisely and economically. My favorite cookies were the Frosted Animal cookies and though I don’t eat them anymore, I smile whenever I see them.

Doritos Cool Ranch Flavor – 5^th grade. If you didn’t have them, you were not cool.

Skor Candy Bar and a New York Seltzer – Summers of 1986 and 1987. If you didn’t consume these in massive quantities and, most importantly, together, you were not cool.

I wonder what will be our child’s “fond memories snacks?” (Hopefully a healthy one will be thrown in.)

Holiday Struggles

11.23.2010

Each year, around the holidays, I feel more in limbo. There are certain routines and rituals I’m used to at this time of year because of what I grew up with but now, being married, and especially now with my mom living elsewhere, I feel like there’s no concrete routine or ritual in our family. We go over to Rob’s parents house, which is always fun and I’m lucky enough to adore them, so that’s not a problem. But I feel an emptiness in terms of knowing exactly what to expect.

Growing up, we always went to Chicago for Christmas. We always had a traditional, Lithuanian Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas was always spent at our cousin’s house with the entire extended family. How I miss those days! Rob’s extended family is all back east, so there's just a tiny group of us out here.

Last year, I made the traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dinner myself and wore myself out. I wish I could say that’s the only reason I’m considering not making it this year but the fact of the matter is I don’t know if I can eat the food. Not only is it fattening, it wreaks havoc on my digestive system. So I’m finding myself deeper in limbo because I’m not sure I can continue that little bit of my childhood. I know that when you’re married new memories and traditions should be created but frankly, Rob dislikes the holidays, so any “tradition” that were to start would come from me. And I feel somewhat alone in that.

We can’t even have our fake Christmas tree anymore because of our cat who eats it irritating his medical condition. Well, there’s that and the fact that he and the other cat climb the tree. I don’t know if we could have a real tree, but I’d hate to spend money on one only to find out we can’t. So now I have to figure out what we’re going to use instead…if anything at all.

This is where I think having a kid would help the situation because you try to find ways to make this time of year special for him/her. You want him/her to have the same kind of memories you yourself had. But is that any reason to have a kid? So you’re “happier” during this time period? We’re each responsible for our own happiness.

I know this offers a blank slate, an opportunity to start our own traditions…but I’m not sure how to go about it. And I’m not sure how ready I am to put parts of my childhood behind me.

The Relationship Is Not Ours to Own

11.06.2010

Two sentiments: some people come in and out of your life but will make an impact and children are only given to us on loan.

On an errand, I passed by the junior college I attended and memories from that era popped into my mind leading me to think about a close girl friend I had. We played on the volleyball team together and at a time when my other teammates shunned me she accepted me. That time-period was a dark one in my personal history and the iron wall I built around me made the others uncomfortable. But this friend looked beyond the wall and helped me along my difficult road back to life.

In the grand scheme of things, we were friends for a very short time, about a year and half, ending mainly because I couldn’t maturely handle working two full-time jobs, my transfer to UCLA and keeping up with the schedule we established like staying up all night (which sometimes included driving to the beach and crashing a private beach club, midnight runs to Rite Aid and the like). I stopped returning her calls thinking I’d deal “tomorrow” until that “tomorrow” never came and she pulled away completely. Still to this day, I miss her.

These memories prompted me to think about the sentiment that kids are merely ours on loan. We raise them, sure, but we (shouldn’t) don’t raise them to live with us forever. We shouldn’t have kids to fill a void in our lives but should have kids as an addition to the life we already have. The truth of the matter is, though, they won’t be there every day, every moment for the rest of their or our lives. They will one day walk out of the front door to be on their own and will leave behind the memories of the years gone by, along with the anticipation of new memories to come.

We become friends with someone because for whatever reason, paths crossed, there was a click and the journey began. But sometimes a fork in the road brings that journey to an end. That friendship was given to us on loan. In fact, one could argue that any friendship or relationship is just a loan and to accept this loan is a big risk, for better or worse.

Would I reject my friend’s friendship were I given an opportunity to go back in time knowing the pain I will go through when the friendship dies? No. I am a richer and deeper person for having had her in my life.

Nothing is permanent. Is it fair to reject the idea of having a child because of fear of pain (emotional or physical)? There isn’t one thing in my life that I would alter, either good or bad, because those experiences (still) shape me. A temporary experience created continual change. How different is having a child?

Halloween Reflections in the Mirror

10.11.2010

Last week, I put out the Halloween decorations like I have every year for the past 11 years. Halloween has always been my favorite day. I remember my mom making our costumes and looking forward to trick-or-treating. There’s something about that ritual that I’ve always loved and, I think, what I like most about it is that it’s the only day of the year that unifies absolutely each and every one of us (except for Jehovah’s Witnesses). It doesn’t matter the race or religion because we all celebrate Halloween somehow.

Decorating the place for any holiday always puts me in a good mood. I remember during grad school being stressed, convinced that I was a failure, and taking time out to put up decorations would immediately lift my spirits. But for the past 2-3 years, my mood isn’t lifted as high as it was once. I took note of that about 3 years ago but I didn’t process it, thinking that maybe it was because I was especially stressed at work.

Then last year I felt the spirits-not-getting-lifted-as-much-as-they-should even more. I probably could’ve given an answer as to why, were I to be pressed for one, but no one asked and I didn’t share so, as what comes naturally to me, I suppressed it. But this year, I couldn’t ignore it and I blame the console in the kitchen and the mirrors hanging over it.

See, each year I tend to put the same decorations in the same place. This year, though, I switched things around. I recently hung some mirrors in the kitchen so that we’d get outdoor light reflected in to what is our cave for an apartment and cleared a lot of stuff from the top of the console. With the space I created, I found a new home for some of the decorations and I ended up really liking the display I made. I took a step back, pleased with what I saw, and yet, despite the pleasure, the look reflected back at me in the mirrors was telling me something different.

I had no one with whom to share that particular moment. As excited and giddy as I was, I asked myself, “For whom are these decorations?” I originally got them because each year I would throw a party but that stopped a good 5 years ago. And though I still keep putting them out, I looked in the mirror and asked, “So what?” I might take great pleasure in the festive way the place looks, but there’s something missing. There’s a sparkle to these decorations that has faded, a sparkle that I see in the decorated homes with kids. This realization, or a more mature way of putting it is this acceptance, makes me feel a little lonely.

Endings

09.10.10

Death. It doesn’t matter who we are, what we believe in or how we behave. The only thing that truly unites us universally is that we all will one day be but a mere memory.

To have so many people die at about the same time is a bit…heart-wrenching especially when two of the deaths are so closely related to my childhood. I don’t wish pain on anyone with whom I’m no longer friends but I know that my former friend (and her family) are going through a lot. Their mom wasn’t Lithuanian but the community adopted her in and every summer at scout camp, she (the mom) was the head cook where we all worked with her at some point during our chore rotation. We adored her. She always had a smile on her face and was already ready to sit and talk with you whenever you needed.

Her husband is and always was a huge flirt but no matter how much he’d flirt his way through a room, when he looked at his wife, there was undying love and devotion. You couldn’t miss that in his eyes. In fact, they were a rare example for me growing up that a marriage can last. I have this foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach that he may pass in the next year himself because having to live without her might be too much.

It’s a strange feeling to lose someone from your childhood. On a day-to-day basis, we don’t pay attention to the ticking clock of our life but when a death occurs, it makes you stop and ponder the years that have gone by. And those memories, at least for me, are always bittersweet.

Rest in peace, A. You will be missed.

Lights! Camera! Memories.

09.03.2010

When I was eight/nine years old, I discovered the world of film or, I should say, the seed that was planted when I saw Star Wars at the age of three began to sprout. I grew up with foreign students living with us and, at that time, there was a group from Japan, France, and Switzerland who were all fans of movies and who would let me tag along when they went to a kid-friendly movie. Those are such great memories for many reasons, one being that I got to delve into other worlds. And not just the movie’s world but my curiosity about the world behind the camera began to grow (that Star Wars seed).

What I most remember about my favorite movies from that time (and my list is below) is their story. There was no dependence on special effects or sexy wardrobe to sell box office tickets. It was the story that brought tears, that brought laughter and that brought cheers and, though I admit to not watching kids’ movies today unless they’re Pixar, I don’t know if story really applies anymore. I see movies like Spy Kids and Beverly Hills Chihuahua and I wonder how much story exists over product placement and special effects. But maybe I’m wrong and what I’m remembering is not so much the actual movies but the happy memories they brought...

My list (in no particular order and between my ages of 8-12):

- The Goonies

- Explorers

- The Journey of Natty Gann

- Lady and the Tramp

- Bambi

- Annie

- Adventures in Babysitting

- The Empire of the Sun

- Amadeus

- E.T.

- The Karate Kid

- The Neverending Story

- Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

- An American Tail

- Flight of the Navigator

- Benji: The Hunted

- Short Circuit

Sesame Street with Annie and The Lady and the Tramp

08.28.2010

The following are the 3 albums I used to listen to all the time when I was a kid. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV and for the first 7 years of my life, I couldn’t even sneak-a-peek of TV because we didn’t even own one. So, I’d listen to these albums to pass the time away and get lost within the realms of my own imagination and dream…dream….dream of one day creating such worlds myself…

Laughter Is Truly Medicine

04.27.2010

My sister and I helped out my good friend who runs Writers Bloc Presents at an event tonight with Carol Burnett and Tim Conway. My sister told me of an incredible story that a woman told her that really touched both of our hearts and I wanted to share.

This older woman’s mother is in the last stages of Alzheimer’s but whenever she and her sister put on a Carol Burnett album, their mother returns to them, even if it’s for a few moments, and the three of them can be present together in the room laughing at the jokes Carol Burnett says just like old times when they’d watch her show on TV. And every time that happens, this woman and her sister cherish these moments as if they were pieces of gold…

This touched me so much because it reminds me that it doesn’t matter who you are, in the end, we’re all going to die in some way and what’s most important is having our family with us in whatever way possible. That, and any memories we have and share, is what will pull us through.

A Moment in Time

04.16.2010

So I’m going to nerd out today. One of my favorite books while in grad school was Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia by Nancy Martha West. It was all about the history of the US through a camera lens with an emphasis on advertisement.

What was probably the most shocking piece of information that I learned is that one of the major reasons someone took a “photo” of someone was to document the person’s body (because they had died and more on that later). Before the “camera” there was the daguerreotype that would take a photo of someone; however, it took a really long time. Individuals would have to sit still for something like 15+ minutes. You can find daguerreotypes of people (both living and dead) as early as the 1840s, but they’re all very stiff, no smiles or anything (even the live bodies). These photos were purely for documentation purposes. By the Civil War, actual cameras were being used but they still took time to take a picture and, to some degree, one could argue that it was still all about documentation. The Civil War was the first war to be photographed and everything was included, the living and the dead.

It’s not until the post-Civil War, when the Industrial Revolution really took off, where the camera’s use begins to adopt a different function. I think I talked the other day about family and the structure of family changing during this time where women were choosing their partners and marrying for love and families were having fewer children.

It’s at this time that we slowly start to see advertisements focus on children and Kodak, the first company to develop cameras, quickly realized the children’s market. The Brownie was developed at the turn of the 20^th Century and it’s so fascinating to see the change over time in how the ads target children. The following ad, like most ads at the time, uses words more than images to sell the product unlike what we see today (where images are used instead of words).[1]

Nine years later, you still have a lot of print, but now there are actually people in the ads and actual children, holding the different camera models that Kodak built.[2]

What I found fascinating was comparing and contrasting the beginning days of photography with daguerreotypes where images were taken of the dead, especially of children, to about the early 1900s when the camera was all about taking a snapshot of an image of a happy moment and one that was intended to remind of that particular happy moment. We would often wrestle with questions such as Why do we take photos at parties and not at funerals? And, if we’re taking photos of only one aspect of our lives, do these photos accurately tell the story of who we are?

Ok, so how does this relate to children in my context? I have looked through photographs of my mom when she was younger in an attempt to understand her better as a whole person. There are parts of my mom’s life that she doesn’t share with me (and, most likely my sister) and, as I’m sure anyone can relate, I want to know what kind of a person my mom was as a child and young adult, etc. I think just like teens filter stories to their parents, our parents filter stories to us. So if I’m looking at photo albums of my mom and her family while growing up but the albums are filled with happy memories, doesn’t that make it easy for one to conveniently forget that there were any rough times? Doesn’t it make it easy to conveniently forget any of the difficulties that come with an alcoholic in the house? Taking the albums at face value, it underscores the very notion of how we constantly seek perfection in our lives. By only seeing smiles and parties and other good times, we present a skewed version of our lives.

There are some friends of my husband’s who documented the birthing process of their son from the beginning of her contractions all the way through her giving birth. Looking at the photos of the mother grasping on to a pillow as she went through a contraction, I actually thought of how cool it was to see that. We’re not presented a one-sided view of the birth such as seeing her all smiles holding her baby once it’s all said and done. We’re given the dark, painful side of giving birth as well.

In the end, we can never be presented with a 100%, accurate view of something whether it is a positive or negative. And I think this is because of the very nature of experience. My experience of an event will differ from someone else’s. I can verbalize my feelings of the experience (and only to a certain degree) but it’s never going to replicate someone else’s. And the very fact that I can look at a photo from 15 years ago and not recognize people or barely remember the reason for the photo (if at all), I think, proves that while a camera can serve as a glimpse to a memory, the moments that make up our lives are just that. They’re just moments that can never truly be captured.

That concludes my lesson and my nerding out, and I now put down my professor hat. You get an A for listening/reading.

---

[1] Advertisement featuring Palmer Cox illustrations for Brownie camera, Cosmopolitan, December 1900. (p. 97).

[2] Advertisement for the Brownie camera, Youth’s Companion, 1909 (p. 106).

[3] West, Nancy Martha Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia, The University Press of Virginia, 2000.

Hockey, Family and Memories

04.10.2010

We went to a hockey game today which was incredibly fun. The first, and last, time I went to a hockey game was back in 1998 with my sister. We had such a blast! At that time, I had recently come back from living for a few months in Toronto and I made sure to catch a rare game of the Kings vs. the Maple Leafs. Man, that game was awesome.

Today, in the row ahead of us was a youngish guy who brought his son to the game (could’ve been an uncle too) and I observed the two of them for as long as I could without getting noticed and without making it look creepy. By the 3^rd quarter of the game, the little boy was sitting on his dad’s lap calling out little things to the guys on the rink which was making us all laugh and giggle at how cute he was.

Watching the two of them made my heart go out to this guy who was cradling his child on his lap. In my mind, I had flash forwards of Rob sitting with our child, or taking our kid to a game, especially when the Phillie Eagles were playing, and it warmed my heart.

But there was a part of me that was a little sad too and it reminded me of the time when I used to nanny these two kids as an undergrad. I would take the kids to the park and there always was this older dad with his daughter, holding her, playing with her, pushing her on the swings… You could see the love in his eyes for this little girl…and I don’t know what the story was. Maybe he had always wanted to have kids but wasn’t lucky and only later in life was able to have one. Or maybe he had grown kids that he neglected because of work or whatever and now he had this second chance. Regardless of the story, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy of this 1 or 2-year old little girl. I will never know what it feels like to grab my father’s fingers or hand when I’m scared or just because. It was at that time, back in 1996-97 that I made a promise to myself and to any future children that I would make sure that he/she/they would know what holding their father’s hand felt like. And I’m lucky to have married a man who feels the same way.

Holidays and Families

04.01.2010

Happy April Fool’s Day!

This week is Easter week and I’ve been thinking a lot about how the holidays were when I was growing up. Twice a year, for Christmas and Easter, I’d get a new holiday outfit – usually a dress that my mom picked out – to wear to church. My grandmother would always fly out for the Easter holidays (and we’d go to Chicago for Christmas) and there’d be all this food preparation depending on the holiday and for Easter our traditional Lithuanian egg dying. I would always give something up for Lent, usually chocolate, and then Easter morning gorge myself giving myself a stomach ache before mass. All these little routine family traditions are something I really miss…kind of like I was talking about yesterday.

I understand that having kids could relieve some of this. With a bambino in the house there’s suddenly a need to do the Easter egg hunts, and baskets, and Easter bunny stories, family get-togethers, etc. But I sometimes wonder if there’s isn’t this weird transformation that happens in that whatever emptiness we may feel or whatever sadness we may feel, and we substitute it or sugar-coat it with having kids. Kids let us relive our childhood memories creating a kind of deja-vu that, perhaps, provides an odd sense of contentment.

TV Inspires

03.31.21010

Rob and I have a number of favorite TV shows that we watch – mainly my picks, hee, hee, hee – and, last night, we were catching up on one of them, Parenthood. At one point during the show, Rob turned to me and said that the show builds up your stress and then eases it by having some touching moment that makes you want to cry. I agree. There have been very few shows, in my opinion, that were worth watching. Most family-oriented TV shows throughout the 90s and 2000s were so demeaning to family and, as a matter of fact, I just saw a blurb in the LA Times about how family shows are now changing to softer dialogue. I think this is great. Shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, for example, I thought was a good show at first, but after watching it a bit more closely, I realized how demeaning it is to men. This is a step backward. Feminism isn’t about putting down men and making them feel worthless, it’s about acceptance and fairness.

But back to the show. My favorite part of the day is when we all settle in for the evening after dinner and watch a little TV or catch a movie. We convene in Rob’s office (because that’s where I insist the TV be) and our two cats follow us in there and settle themselves on my lap, sometimes on top of each other, sometimes next to each other, but always on my lap. It’s a lovely feeling to be there with everyone I love and I sometimes wonder how much a child is going to alter this picture. I’m not saying this negatively.

There was a scene toward the end of Parenthood where everyone’s hanging out at the grandparents’ house and the guys were playing some basketball, the women, of course, were by the food and with the children, and the scene just brought me so much contentment. It made me think about all the x-mas holidays when we went to Chicago and how on x-mas day we’d go out to Indiana to my cousin’s and spend the day there with, like, 50 family members. Those big family gatherings are something I miss more than anything. There’s something about big families and holidays and the feeling of “belonging”. There’s a routine, there’s a system, and, as a kid, I never realized just how important this all was. It made me think about how empty I’ve felt since my grandmother moved back to Lithuanian in 1998 and that part of my routine came to a complete halt not to be picked up again, most likely, until we have kids.

Rob and I have a ton of friends here in LA and they’ve definitely become family so much so that when we talk about moving to another city it gives us both pause when we realize exactly who we’d be leaving behind. But these friends have their own families that they go to during the holidays or birthdays or other special occasions. They don’t come to our house. And now that my mom lives in Lithuania, my biological family has shrunk even more to just me and my sister; something I don’t want to ever lose but might. It makes me wonder why family becomes more important to us as we get older and becomes of the utmost importance to us when we have kids. When we’re teens we want nothing to do with our families but at some point that switches and, if we’re lucky enough, we still have them around and we can appreciate them. For all the havoc that families create, it’s those little precious moments we have with them that stay in our minds and hearts and maybe that’s a contributing factor to why people have kids.

Potential Memories

03.15.2010

On my walk this morning, I was thinking about a conversation that I overheard yesterday between two men who were talking about their respective hometowns back in Texas. There was one thing that was mentioned that really stuck out for me and not because it’s some brand new concept that I’ve never considered, but, let’s just say, I sort of saw it from a slightly different angle.

The two men were talking about how whenever they go back to the towns in which they either grew up or in which they spent many years of their lives, the town had drastically changed from when they lived there. I’m sure most have experienced something similar where you go back to an area you knew well and it’s changed. The store you used to frequent is now a parking lot or the house in which you lived is now an apartment complex or a completely different house. This is the natural progression of things and no one is immune.

But this idea of going back and visiting a place from your childhood, for example, really stuck with me. My hometown isn’t too far from where I currently reside and, yet, the idea of going and visiting makes me nervous. I’ve been a few times since I moved from there in the late 70s, but it’s probably been over 10 or 15 years since I’ve gone back to visit. And that time was probably the first time since I left. But when I think about that place, the little apartment my mom was renting across the street from the park, I have incredibly fond memories. And this made me think about the possibility of creating fond memories for and with my own child.

This was a rare moment. I imagined having a child sit on my lap and to whom I read a bedtime story. Or holding his/her hand down the street as we tried to catch up to the butterfly that fluttered from one flower to the next. Or sitting on a park bench sharing a sandwich. These priceless moments can’t be manufactured or planned. These kinds of moments are spontaneous and become not only enriching, but help in defining one’s soul. Serving as a mere guide to the world as it exists now is reciprocated in a child’s eyes and imagination when he/she shares his/her insight with you. You can’t get this from another adult. And for a fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of a possible future of having all of those potential memories created. It would be nice to have new memories created with the same richness that I have of those days with my mom.