Share some good memories?

SOme cousins had a goat, other cousins had a racoon. I thought they were so much cooler than my old dog lol.

My older cousin was heavily into drama as a child and every time we visited the three of us (her, me and my sister) would create, rehearse and perform a short play for our parents. That was fun but what was more fun was one of my other cousins, who had an enormous train set. I couldn’t get enough of that.

I’ve been remembering being on vacation with my Ex and two sons at a cabin we would rent in a state park. We’d sometimes go to a drive-in movie or out for ice cream at night. Driving back to the cabin, we’d be playing Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger on the car’s tape player. It was the most content, secure feeling. I really miss being with my family and being an intact family.

My son, even when he was eight or nine, would come grab my hand to take me somewhere he wanted me to go.

If my daughter and I were out in public, like at a parade or at the park, she would use my feet as a sit stool.

I was horrible at math. No matter how hard I tried I never got good grade at math. I was desperate and thought I would just give up and did nothing to improve my math. Just then two friends I had just made came and tried to persuade me to learn. One friend offered to tutor me and the other acted as a “cheerleader”, always encouraging me to try harder and praised all my progress. I got more and more motivation to learn and my math improved. At the final exam, I couldn’t believe I got a B!

I just shared some firsts with my ten year old daughter. We experienced her first train ride, trip to a large city (Chicago), swim in a large body of water (Lake MIchigan) and first concert (1D at Soldier Field). It was a trip of a lifetime we’ll never forget.

When I was raising my kids in the 80’s and 90’s, I refused to have cable, internet, or video games in the house. They spent a LOT of time outside. They’d get on my nerves and I’d holler at them to go run around Farmer’s Field, across the street, 10 times! And they would.

When my daughter was about 13 or so, she could feel her childhood slipping away. One day she asked me to take a walk with her….and we spent the whole afternoon walking through the pages of her childhood.

She took me down an alley, then stopped at a privacy fence and said, “Look through that knot hole. The guy has a Japanese garden in his back yard! We watched him build it! He adds new stuff every so often. Isn’t it cool?!” It was VERY cool.

South Western College campus was their play ground. She showed me a funky tree on campus that had limbs that grew almost horizontally to the ground. She said kids would collect there and sit on the limbs and make plans for when they grew up.

It wasn’t just the campus…they knew the buildings inside and out too. She took me to the new science building they had put up a couple of years before. She showed me where Alvin the Alligator’s living place was. She described where he lived in the old building and how much nicer his new digs were and how much happier he was….until one day he wasn’t there any more. He had died. She took me on a tour of the whole building. Really NEAT stuff in there! Then we snuck out a back door before we got chased away!

She took me to so many, many secret places around town and told me the stories and memories that were tied to each one. I could sense that she didn’t want it all to end, didn’t want to close that book, but she couldn’t stop it. It was a tide relentlessly sneaking up to claim her childhood, and she could sense it coming. It brings tears to my eyes to this day. It was one of the most precious moments I’ve ever spent with one of my kids.

And then my baby started slipping away after that, stolen by the tide and boys and bad attitudes. I turned around twice, and she was having children of her own. But I’ll never, ever forget that walk that day.

Thank you Corrie, my love.

My goodness! What a special day.

It really, really was. Especially when you consider that she was at that age they pretty much hate their folks. The fact that they even EXIST is a horrible embarrassment….

And I almost said “No,” because I was reading a book….that chance would have never come again.

Watching a goat follow a very slow car outside my friend’s beach house. It’s one of my favorites since it was so weird and we just looked at each other and burst out laughing.