Going Back...

I’m taking a scrapbooking class online:  daily word challenges.  We find the meaning of the day’s word in our life, write about it, and add a photo.  The purpose of the class is to help us learn to dig deeper and find what we really think about the everyday things in our lives.

Through posting my daily writing in the online gallery, I have met some wonderful women who share my love for documenting life as it happens.  Through our stories, we have learned about each other and how each of us approaches our life, today.

I feel a touch of the green-eyed monster as I read what others have written.  No, I don’t want to be somebody else, or live somewhere else, or have a different life.  Not really.  What I want is to revisit those wonderful days when my children were little.

I want to be a time traveler, going back a few decades in my own life.  As a time traveler, I can take all the knowledge and experience I have collected through the years and apply it to that time, back then. Perhaps I would make some different decisions, handle situations differently, or respond differently to the scuff and banter of everyday life.

Or maybe I wouldn’t…

Mostly, I would love the opportunity to just sit and watch my children.  Not fix supper, clean house, do laundry, or work in the garden, unless, of course, the children were there doing it with me.  I would know from all the life I have lived that I need to savor the moments.  Savor the special times that occur daily.  The words and voices that were my children.  The things they had to say…

I would discipline differently, trying to find out where the behavior came from instead of just punishing it.  I wouldn’t say “not now” when my children wanted to do something with me.  I would let the housework, or cooking, or laundry wait, instead of the children.

I would tell them how I felt about things and what I saw when I looked at them.  I would tell them how much joy they brought into my life, instead of telling them to “sit down and be quiet.”

Oh how I long for those little voices, those thoughts and ideas, and even that squirming and silliness.  Those days of innocence that pass too quickly, and leave a hole in an old woman’s heart.  I travel only through their photos for now, remembering and smiling as I look at each one…

There is a connection to that past that will never die.  It is emulated, closely, as I look at the faces of my grandchildren, catching fleeting glimpses of their parents at the same age.  I am sure that will come around again, with great grandchildren, if I am lucky.

But I really am lucky: my little ones are all grown up now.  They are good citizens and good parents.  And loving children, still….

Cali