Feelings

I have been feeling really down lately.   I think it started a few weeks ago.  At Weight Watchers, the woman who leads the group was talking about her weight loss.  She lost 100 lb and has kept it off for 15 years.  Okay, fine.

Then I started thinking.  In 15 years I will be 80.  Fifteen years isn't a very long time, but 80 seems pretty old!  I know the joke "consider the alternative".   But as a reality it really hit me hard.

Also birthdays.  Courtney and Morgan both have birthdays in the next few weeks.   She'll be 42 and he'll be 39.   And I won't be seeing them on their birthdays.   I cannot remember when we last celebrated their birthdays as a whole family together.  When they were living at home I feel like they were still mine.  My kids.  My babies.  Now they are these whole, aging, independent adults.

The whole passage of time and aging is a common theme in my writing.  I guess because it's where I am and what I am thinking and obsessing about.

Nick has been scanning old pictures.  I have been helping him identify some of them.  He cannot always tell which child or baby is in the picture, but I am pretty confident that I can.

There's a shoe box full of letters sitting on the round table.  Actually, there are lots of shoe boxes of letters, but it's the only one that I have been in today.  They are funny and informative.  And make me remember things I had forgotten.  And I wrote about things that I don't remember, but since I wrote them I guess they happened.

Dale and I sitting in our old family car.  I think it was a Nash Rambler

Curly haired me at about age 3, probably in Greece

My grandparents, my dad and my uncles.   I am guessing around 1934

Sisters 1964

Carol's high school graduation 1966

Nick before I knew him.  One his motorcycle in Dijon, France