Post by rebecca on Dec 26, 2008 0:05:41 GMT
New Year's hasn't happened yet, so maybe I should wait, but this is pretty good, and I'm sentimental as all hell today, so it's got to come out.
Last night I was with a bunch of friends, many of whom I've known since college or shortly after. My friend Annette was the single mother to a girl named Judy Beth, and little Judy Beth is all grown up now. She's 22 and just a lovely young woman. I never had kids of my own but one of the things I always wanted to accomplish with other people's kids who were in my life, and one of the main things I would have wanted to do with my own if I had had them, was just the very simple goal of giving them happy memories. i don't mean stupid things like spoiling them rotten or letting them grow up into monsters. I just mean doing my part to give them a space where they look back and they remember happy times.
When Judy was little we used to go several times a year to one of two different places out in the country - a professor of Annette's used to have her housesit, and the parents of another of us owned a little house on the Ohio river. There was nothing luxurious about these places, really. Well, the professor's husband had a collection of old blues and jazz 48s and a record player, but none of us ever had the nerve to mess with it. and they had a big dining room table that cold hold us all. I could go on. Mainly, it was peace and quiet in the country, where we'd play music, go for walks, have a lot of water gun fights, cook big meals, play cards all night long till everybody dropped on sleeping bags in a heap like a litter of puppies, etc.
And then last night we were reminiscing about the time we were on the way to the Kretchman's and three-year-old Judy threw her shirt and a much-needed 20 dollar bill out the car window and later managed to quietly get hold of the Kretchman's cookbooks and colored in them all, leaving Annette desparately trying to replace them. Judy said "you know, those times at the Kretchman's were the happiest times of my childhood. There, and at Mark's parents house." That just made me so happy, that she remembers those times that way! The fact that those are probably my happiest memories of my 20s makes me think about how sometimes, when you think you're in harmony with the things around you, you really are. Sometimes things areally are that good.
Last night I was with a bunch of friends, many of whom I've known since college or shortly after. My friend Annette was the single mother to a girl named Judy Beth, and little Judy Beth is all grown up now. She's 22 and just a lovely young woman. I never had kids of my own but one of the things I always wanted to accomplish with other people's kids who were in my life, and one of the main things I would have wanted to do with my own if I had had them, was just the very simple goal of giving them happy memories. i don't mean stupid things like spoiling them rotten or letting them grow up into monsters. I just mean doing my part to give them a space where they look back and they remember happy times.
When Judy was little we used to go several times a year to one of two different places out in the country - a professor of Annette's used to have her housesit, and the parents of another of us owned a little house on the Ohio river. There was nothing luxurious about these places, really. Well, the professor's husband had a collection of old blues and jazz 48s and a record player, but none of us ever had the nerve to mess with it. and they had a big dining room table that cold hold us all. I could go on. Mainly, it was peace and quiet in the country, where we'd play music, go for walks, have a lot of water gun fights, cook big meals, play cards all night long till everybody dropped on sleeping bags in a heap like a litter of puppies, etc.
And then last night we were reminiscing about the time we were on the way to the Kretchman's and three-year-old Judy threw her shirt and a much-needed 20 dollar bill out the car window and later managed to quietly get hold of the Kretchman's cookbooks and colored in them all, leaving Annette desparately trying to replace them. Judy said "you know, those times at the Kretchman's were the happiest times of my childhood. There, and at Mark's parents house." That just made me so happy, that she remembers those times that way! The fact that those are probably my happiest memories of my 20s makes me think about how sometimes, when you think you're in harmony with the things around you, you really are. Sometimes things areally are that good.
