Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about life before Fred and Lucy. Maybe it’s got something to do with my recent neck problems (Dad’s Dr. seems to think it’s hereditary), plus this cough I can’t shake, mixed with my first case of poison ivy for the year (caught it on the first weekend cutting grass!! Yeah me!!), in addition to all this gray hair I’m sporting, but suddenly it’s like I’ve taken a step back and I’m seeing things….people for who they are today and not who they were. You may remember that in the first month of this year alone Fred caught Pneumonia twice, spent 3 days in the hospital, the car broke down 4 times, Lucy changed jobs, insurance changed, and life in 2008 seemed like a scary place to live in. Not so much now though.
Fred is changing so much I’d need to quit the day job in order to blog about all his exploits. I often wonder what Lucy and I did all day Pre-Fred. We waited 8 years to have a child and part of me knows most of that was spent building the life we have today. Climbing our way out of debt and out of that 1 bedroom slum that shines like a golden palace in our memories. I don’t regret those days at all until I stop to consider all that we accomplish in the 24-hour 7 days week Parenting Lifestyle we now dwell in. I wonder what we did with all that free time we never knew we had. I simply don’t remember anything other than Lucy and I being in love. Sure there are images and stories that are stored away somewhere in the recess of my mind, but life now is like the sequel to some great adventure that will never truly end….the purpose just changes.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, struggle through years of hard work to build a world together, get everything they always wanted….The End.
New book, same boy and girl, life is different, cast of characters has moved on and some have moved away, baby comes and….the adventure continues. Same but different.
I no longer recognize that boy that fought day in and day out with the angry man. I wonder what he thought life would be like twenty years later. Truth is, I somehow know that he never thought about anything other than “where’s everybody hanging out tonight?”
The brother and mother….the family torn up and yet better off. The Nani went to Nashville to see Broccoli this weekend and after a brief call to let me know she made it back, I got the sense that I’m not the only one waking up and staring out amazed at the new world that has grown up around us in the blink of an eye. As if we were coma patients suddenly finding ourselves light years into the future and swearing a heartbeat of time had only passed.
Even the Gigi seems to be changing. We are never meant to get along with our in-laws partly because we’ve just spent the greatest part of our lives trying to break away from our own parents only to be given a new set, neither of which by choice or some process of personal selection. To see the bond between her and Fred and how he runs through the house for entire days saying “Gigi? Nani? Gigi? Nani? Gigi?” as if one or the other is hiding just around the next turn waiting to surprise him, erases all thoughts of how relationships were and how we got to this point. The important thing is we are here.
Though I’m considering dying the gray out of my hair and have suddenly taken up the habit of falling asleep in front of the televised Sunday afternoon golf game, all of this change has made me feel younger than ever. Never in my life have I wanted warmer temps to get here so badly. There are kite’s to be flown, Frisbees to be thrown, a pack of sidewalk chalk that demands to be used up. There are more adventures to be had by Lucy, Fred, Gigi, Nani, Broccoli….and of course Charlie Blockhead.
I can’t wait to see how this turns out.
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