This Reminds Me

Archive for September 4th, 2006

Julia’s been really interested in a wedding picture we have displayed in the hall, so, today, I dragged out the whole album.  We flipped through the pages, identifying friends and family she’s met – and, unfortunately, too many she will never meet on earth.

November 18, 1989 – I say it was the week before Thanksgiving.  Keith says it was the week after Armistice.

I didn’t tell the family stories about our wedding, awaiting a time when her language skills and kindred interest are more keen.  Rachel, though, piped up with, “Mom, tell her you were saving to go to Egypt when you met Dad, but instead, you spent the money on your wedding.”

Well, yeppers, that’s true – and I’ll be sure to tell her about that some time.  That bit of lore will probably be framed in a whole presentation called, “Your Mother Used to Be An Interesting Person.”

I was.  I used to travel – India, the Far East, Venezula, Canada, Mexico, Trinidad & Tabago - often weekends to see friends, just for fun.  I used to read books.  All kinds of books.  Novels, sci fi, history, poetry, philosophy, science, religion, essays.  It was nothing to knock down three or four books in a week.  I used to cook exotic dishes because they were exotic.  I went places simply to take pictures – tons of them.   I was a pretty good volleyball setter on the Thursday night church league.  I used to love Tuesday nights, when a group of us single adult church of Christ’ers would get together simply to sing acappella until our voices cracked.  I saw every movie I wanted to see, enjoyed season tickets to the symphony and if Jerry Jeff Walker was in town – baby, I was there.

As Stephen King illustrates in the Dark Tower series (books I used to read) – the world – my world – has moved on.  A more recent book summarized this transition very well – Who Moved My Cheese? Who changed what I want?  Who decided that I would rank finishing the laundry right up there with a Sunday afternoon at the symphony?

I think I did.

I don’t need a first-run movie with pricey refreshments when I can have one of our family movie nights with junk food in front of a U-verse pay-per-view.  I don’t miss the symphony since I’ve got the Bush Middle School Choir.  And why would I travel  to shoot pictures of flowers, cemeteries, conventions and museums when the four most gorgeous kids in the world are smiling right in front of me?

And why would I need Egypt when I’ve been to Russia – twice. 

My cheese got moved, all right.  Now it’s displayed on an end cap at Target, with a big red clearance sticker slapped on it.  And if I can buy it with a coupon – and if my kids are chattering around me – and if Keith is home waiting to unload the car – I’m mighty happy.