The good ol' days.

May 9, 2022

Day 2,030

         "When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?" "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now." But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago." 

     

     Old photos of my babies keep popping up in my Google photos app. Every day, I awaken to find yet another picture of Adelyn or Tobin from many, many years ago on my phone. Those pictures make me happy. I love looking back at pictures of when my babies were actually babies. Those pictures also make my heart ache. I've never known an aching like this. It's a happy/yearn/ache; I'm happy to see their pictures, but I yearn to go back to the beginning and begin again with them knowing what I know now. I yearn to hold them once more as I did then, but only with the knowledge that I have now...it will go painfully quick. Childhood, I've come to realize, is the shortest time in a person's life. I'm constantly torn between the two emotions of: 

1. I'm happy my children are healthy and growing. 

2. I'm sad it's going so painfully, awfully quick. 

     I long to go back to the good ol' days. The days when my babies were little and I was at home with them and we did whatever we pleased all day long. We played. We read. We walked. We went to the playground. We cuddled. We were quiet. We were loud. We ate every meal together. 

     I remember Andy's quote from The Office. "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good ol' days before you've actually left them." 

     So here's this: 

If I'm in the good ol' days now, then the good ol' days of long ago can't really be long ago, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago. 

By this logic, I'm always living in the good ol' days. And my achy heart doesn't ache so much when I think of it that way. 

     Thankful for the good ol' days.