Misty Water-Color Memories

So apparently it's Retro Week on Facebook and everyone is posting old pictures of themselves and friends.  I used to hate doing that because I HATED the way I looked in celluloid but now that I'm a big fan of soft light and long distance shots, I don't mind so much looking at the dork in the picture only because she looks so stinkin' young!

Looking at the pictures though, it makes me think of past experiences with so many of these people.  Not all of them good, to be sure, but who has an absolute perfect childhood or adolescence?  Between parents, friends, puberty, and school, I think we all carried  a heavy load...for a kid anyway!  I think it's like when someone dies and we can only seem to remember the good things; people remember youth so fondly they romanticize it into a Walton's episode.  But I don't.  I bid a not-so-fond farewell to childhood and adolescence and threw my arms lovingly around my adulthood in a warm welcoming embrace!

Now please don't get me wrong, especially those really great people I hung out with back then; I have fantastic, funny, warm, great memories!  I remember high school dinner dances and proms and hanging out at the South Amboy Bay or under the overpass near President Park or at Chicken Tonite or Papa's Pizza or the "tracks" or the "rail" and having a rip-roaring good time.  Just sitting here thinking I realize I could list places and events for an hour...funny how they all come flooding in when you open that archived file in your brain's computer.  I'm not going to be able to tell my kids some of these memories, but that's another story!  

But it wasn't all good.  I lost my dad my senior year of high school.  I had a volatile relationship with my mother.  I lost friends for reasons, honestly, I can't remember; one day I had them, the next day I didn't.  I know there's more to it than that, but it's not coming to me and  maybe it never will unless someone reminds me (which I'm in no hurry for, thank you very much).  I had such a good time sophomore year that I had to leave private school and go to the public high school...very embarrassing!  (Not going to SWMHS but having to, if that makes any sense.)  And although a good school with great people I'd known from my junior high days, because I came back after three years away, I felt like the 'new kid' or the one who was late to the movie and just couldn't get caught up fast enough before the next scene started.  So I guess I wasn't sure where I fit in...did I belong with the people I'd just spent the last three years with, three really good years, or with my old friends who I missed but who had moved on and in some cases, didn't mesh with me the way we once had?  It was a rough road in the beginning, to be sure.  However, the wonderful thing about this, to find the silver lining, is that I had a multitude of friends spanning two schools and a number of towns!

So based on this small glimpse into my past, whenever a fellow twenty-something or early thirty-something would whine, "Oh how I wish I could go back!" I'd smirk and say, "No thanks!  Are you kidding?  I have a good job, good husband, nice house, a decent relationship with my mother, living the life as a DINK (Double Income No Kids) and loving it, and you want me to go back?!  Nope! Not gonna happen!  Not no how, not no way!"  ..........But things change with time, don't they?

I look at the pictures friends are posting and wish I would've been to a lot of the things they'd gone to or stayed in touch after graduation.  I didn't even go to my high school's 10 year reunion.  I look at the group picture now and regret it.  I think I just wasn't ready to stroll down memory lane.  At that point I was married for two years, had a great job and a great life so maybe reminiscing wasn't appealing for me at the time.  I don't know the reason anymore.

Now, in my forties (let's just say 'mid forties' and leave it at that), I am now seeing the attraction of going back and reliving some of it.  But like so many people say, I want to go back armed with my 25 plus years of experience gained; I don't want to be the same clueless-thinks-she-knows-everything-but-in-reality-knows-absolutely-nothing girl.  Otherwise, I'm out!

~Eileen Cassidy Bishop

Cross Examination

The more my children learn, the more questions they have.  The more information they're given, the more they require.  They aren't easily satisfied either!  If your answer is at all vague, the more in-depth the questions become.  Teachers cover the academic end; though at these ages, seven and six, I'm pretty confident in that area.  (Although, has anyone seen the new new math?? Makes no sense to me!)  

It's the religious questions that trip me up!  They had questions before, but now that they're both in CCD (religious education Catholic style), they've got even more.  I can answer most of them at least enough to satisfy them for a while, but when we get to the Holy Trinity...well...that's a toughy to explain to children!  They see things so logically and physically, so to speak.  When I tell them God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are one, they look at me and smirk.  

"But Jesus is God's son, right?"  

"Yes, that's right."

"Then how can He be the same as God?"

"Um, well, because he's God and He can do anything." (Lame, I know, but I was desperate.)

"Was Jesus always with God in Heaven?"

"Yes."

"So that's two people, God and Jesus."

"No, they're not people.  It's not like they're sitting side by side up there."

Blank stare.  

Blink, blink.

"Nevermind."

"Okay."  (Inaudible sigh of relief!)

I know they walk away more confused than when they asked the question, but I figure I've shaken their confidence in my role as all-knowing oracle enough for now.

When Gene was leaving the house with our beloved Chickie wrapped in a blanket and cradled in is arms after she passed away, they asked where he was taking her. "Aren't we going to bury her?!"  Gene and I just looked at each other, sighed, and decided on the truth, albeit a bit vague.  "Well, the vet is going to cremate Chickie.  Cremation is something he does that makes Chickie small enough to fit in a shoebox."  They were okay with this and I was pretty proud of myself for satisfying them.  That is, until the next day when Cathy, playing with a miniature Barbie dog, asked, "Is this how Chickie will look when she comes home?"  Ugh.  "No baby, she won't look like a dog anymore. She won't look like anything."  Blank look.  Not until Chickie came home in the lovely rosewood box and they asked to see her did they understand.  I had hoped to avoid showing them the ashes that she'd become, but didn't want to deny them.  When I did, their eyes opened a little wider and their mouths gaped a bit, but they got it; they finally understood.  "That's Chickie??!" asked Cathy.  "It's okay," answered Leo, "She's just back to dust, Cath, it's not really her.  She's up playing in the field by the bridge, remember?"  "Oh yeah."  And that was that.

I know it's just going to get harder and harder to satisfy them as time goes by and their abilities to process information grow stronger each day.  I know there will be many more blank stares or even, God forbid, eye rolls and sideways looks at each other that say, "She has no idea, does she?"  

I don't remember how old I was before I became aware of just how clueless my parents were nor do I remember how old I was when I realized they weren't clueless at all.  I can tell you one thing for sure; it was after many, many eye rolls!

~Eileen Cassidy Bishop