Time Goes By

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First Day of School 2010

August 25, 2010 in Family, Kids, Time Goes By by Sara | 2 comments

Another year begins. Am I the only one who thinks that time is galloping by at an alarming rate? How is it that we have been here a year. That the girls are starting their second school year here in Dayton. That they are no longer the new kids on the block or in the classroom.

The start of school brings a lot of excitement to our household. The girls could hardly sleep the night before and woke up like a shot with the alarm. Before I had myself half way awake they were dressed and downstairs eating breakfast.

Oh the joy of children that can make their own food.

There have been a few changes over the summer. My oldest, who I have spent the last 11 years begging to brush her hair at least once a day and to please at least wear something that comes to close to matching, has been transformed. That third grader that started the school year out in a shirt with a hole in it, has disappeared. In her place there is now a girl who spent a considerable amount of time picking out the right outfit for the first day, complete with accessories. The other night she actually asked me to blow dry her hair.

I think there might have even bit a bit of lip gloss worn.

I’ve been warned that the girl drama would probably start up this year and seems like that is also coming true. There is already a little break in a relationship that is causing a bit of angst. Mostly on my part. It’s hard not to want to jump in and fix everything. But these are valuable lessons they need to learn on their own. Opportunities to both extend and accept grace abound even at this age.

It’s going to be another great year. In all kinds of ways I can’t even imagine.

Am I wrong to hope that they’ll still be holding hands like this when they walk into high school?

Ah, The 70’s

April 13, 2010 in Good Ole Days, Time Goes By, Travel by Sara | 1 comment

The museum we went to this past weekend was really fantastic. In fact, the girls said it was their favorite thing of the whole weekend. It had all kinds of stuff. Cars and planes and trains and furniture. I’m not sure where the furniture fit in exactly, but still, it had A LOT of stuff. However, the things I was most taken with were things that I had forgotten about completely but was transported straight back into the 1970s the instant I saw them.

The first one was this

Did you have one of these?! I’m sure the one I’m remembering was my brother’s but I could play that thing like nobody’s business. Forget about your fancy DS thingamagigs with their fancy graphics. All you needed where those green dashes marching down the field while you maneuvered like mad with your right thumb to advance the ball. I’ll bet you can even remember the sound it made when you scored a touchdown, can’t you?

The other was this beauty.

All together now.

“OH I wish I were an Oscar Myer Weiner! That is what I’d truly like to be-e-e. Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner, everyone would be in love with me!”

We ate some Oscar Meyers at my house growing up. We ate them cut up in kraut and grilled and cooked quick in that new fangled thing called a microwave oven. But my favorite way was just boiled in plain old water until hot through and through and plopped on a bun with mustard and ketchup. Yum.

Oh, the 1970s. When technology was just getting started and we didn’t know the perils of too many nitrites.

Those were the days.

Even If We Ruined The Environment

March 30, 2010 in Family, Time Goes By by Sara | 1 comment

Well wishes from many friends.

$$ to spend at the bookstore.

A promise of help in my badly neglected garden from my mom who has VERY green thumbs.

Dinner with my family at our favorite pizza place.

Ice cream afterward. (Actually, this caused a bit of consternation among the girls with one lobbying for the shop right next door to the pizza place and the other for one a few miles away. Katie’s argument ran along the lines of “So I guess you want to drive there and ruin the environment!”).

The perfect day.

It even made the official entry into my late forties less painful.

Although the fact that for the next 4 months my husband gets to say, “I’m four years younger than you!”, is a somewhat bitter pill to swallow.

But still.

Just perfect.

Just Perfect

March 29, 2010 in Marriage, Time Goes By by Sara | 6 comments

If you pin a woman down, I think she would admit that we sometimes long for the days when our husbands were courting us. The days when you could spend hours on the phone and nothing was too much trouble if it meant you could be together for a few hours. The days when the sheer adrenaline of new love kept you going even if you were keeping insane hours.

However, I would argue that love that has endured for a time certainly has its benefits.

My husband now knows me so well that he knew my perfect birthday would include a great meal, a nice quiet hotel room and just about 24 hours away from the responsibilities of our children and the dog. He knew that a drink in a very cool hotel bar and some time for me to wander around my favorite store would just be icing on the cake (the birthday cake, that is).

Art Deco hotel lobby

Yummy Pomegranate Martini

Roasted Beet Salad

It was perfect.

I think I’ll keep him around for another year.

The Master Planner

Home Again

February 22, 2010 in Friends, Time Goes By, Travel by Sara | 1 comment

Once upon a time, I wrote a little piece about time passing by in my old neighborhood. We were soon to be moving from DC to Ohio and I was feeling nostalgic and in a reflective mood.

I’ve moved enough to know that time does not stop just because we have moved away. Life keeps moving and the space that you once occupied is filled with new people and new commitments.

But if you are very lucky, (and we are), you can return to the places that you lived and for a short time it feels as if you never left. Friends welcome you back with open arms and cleared calendars. Dinners are planned and lovingly prepared. Children are gathered close and kissed on top of the head. Girlfriends gather and talk resumes as if it had just stopped the day before. Babies that were born just days to weeks after we left are cuddled and tickled. Beloved teachers are visited with and old school friends become reacquainted in no time at all.

We had a wonderful week (and yes, the snow DC had was just as crazy as you heard). We look forward to our next visit with great anticipation.

But a nice thing happened when we drove back into our neighborhood here. Each of us was glad to be home. The girls anxious to go back to school and see their friends, JD and I ready to go back to work and for life to resume it’s familiar routine. For while we would gladly gather up each and everyone of our friends from our time in DC and move them right next door, we were not feeling the pull to live there again. It was a wonderful experience, but the traffic and congestion are things that we gladly leave behind. It seemed like another affirmation that we made the right move by coming here.

We’ll keep talking it up to our friends left behind. Who knows, we may talk one or two of them into trying out the midwest.

Or at least coming out for a long weekend.

Do You Feel Like We Do

February 2, 2010 in Family, Time Goes By by Sara | 5 comments

I sometimes find myself thinking about the gadgets my children are growing up with. About the fact that they will never remember a time when there weren’t multiple computers in our house. That they have no idea what the Encyclopedia Britannica is but will instead do their research by typing a word or phrase into Google.

Rotary phones have never existed for them. Neither have 8 track tape players.

Which just happened to be what I received for my 16th birthday, complete with Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” tape which I wore slap out over the next several months. Alternating that with the Bay City Rollers and the Stone Brothers, of course.

Today Katie was doing a report for social studies and she said she needed my help on something.

“Mommy, what is that thing that they used to play on those things with the big thing coming out of the top of it.

(The fact that I understood exactly what she was asking me is a source of endless frustration to her daddy as he wishes we would all be a little more descriptive in our questions. My brother in law suffers the same thing with my sister.)

“You mean a gramophone?”

“No, I mean that black disc thing they played on it.”

“You mean a record?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

And it made me just a little sad that she’ll probably never hear the hiss of a record player as it plays her favorite Barry Manilow album for the fifteenth time that day.

That she won’t hold a record jacket in her hand and admire Peter Frampton’s curly locks ( I was partial to the “LIVE” albums)

I’m pretty sure they mostly came from the Columbia Record Club 12 for 1 penny sale.

or try to figure out how those boys from Kiss walk in those crazy platform shoes.

(That one was by brother’s)

Call me crazy, but I think these kids are missing something with their little ipod screens, don’t you?

End Of An Era

December 16, 2009 in Faith, Time Goes By by Sara | No comments

Oral Roberts died today.

Maybe some of you don’t know who Oral Roberts is. To me he is bound up in the memories of my childhood. He, along with his fellow evangelists like Billy Graham and Robert Schuller come from a generation of preachers that were truly that. They preached. They dressed up when they spoke and had Brylcreem in their hair. Whether or not you agreed with their theology, you had to respect that they passionately believed what they believed. That Jesus died for us and that this was indeed very good news. In this day of preachers who wear jeans in the pulpit and as much product on their hair as I do, these gentlemen in their suits and ties would seem hopelessly out of date. But in the the 1970s and early 80s they were very much on the forefront of evangelism.

My grandparents loved Billy Graham. From the time I was a little girl, I can remember watching his crusades on my grandparents TV. I thought he was so handsome. He would stand there with his open bible draped over his hand and preach the simple message of salvation. And when he was through, thousands of people would stream down from their seats all around the stadium stand before the alter and give their hearts to Christ while George Beverly Shay sang “Amazing Grace” in the background.

Even after I was grown and left home, if I happened upon one of his crusades being televised, I would call my grandparents to make sure they were watching.

Time has moved on. Reverend Graham doesn’t preach publicly any more. Robert Schuller no longer reigns over his crystal cathedral and Oral Roberts is now gone from this earth. New evangelists like Matt Chandler, Rob Bell, and Francis Chan are now the leaders of the evangelical movement. They are gifted, talented, wonderful men of God. But I’ll have to admit that it makes me sad to see the old guard dying out. Maybe because it is another indication of just how quickly time passes.

Oral Roberts preached his last sermon just this year at age 90. Again, whether you agreed with him or not, I think we could all agree that to believe in something so passionately that we cannot cease to speak of it is in itself a gift.

RIP Mr. Roberts.

Snapshots

December 4, 2009 in Family, Good Ole Days, Time Goes By by Sara | 1 comment

Growing up, my daddy always took pictures with a camera that had belonged to my mom’s dad. It came in a brown case and it always required a little bit of relearning on my dad’s part when he went to use it.

When he got the film developed, it was always as slides. Every so often he would pull out the slide projector and we would have a slide show. I can remember he and mom hanging up a white sheet on the wall on which to project the pictures. I can remember the whirring noise the projector motor made and the dust motes that would float in front of the light coming from the front. I can remember the clicking noise that the projector made with each change of the slide and I can hear the frustration in my daddy’s voice when one would get hung up.

I recently took possession (at least temporarily) of all the slides mom and dad had accumulated over the years. I bought a scanner which will allow me to scan in the slides and turn them into digital images. I can’t wait to see all that I find.

JD worked hard yesterday to get the scanner working.

This is the first slide he scanned in.

Me at about 2 years old

I’m either squinting because the sun is in my eyes or from the fact that I was so farsighted that I spent a lot of time trying to see what was in front of me! I started wearing glasses soon after this picture.

Please take note that my tennis shoes have little sailboats on them. They match my dress. This is possibly one of the last times that this occurred.

This is going to be the most fun ever.

***** Matt Chandler will be having surgery today at noon to remove and biopsy the tumor which was found in the front part of his brain. Please lift Matt and his family, the surgeon, and the staff surrounding him as they work and wait today.*****

Eight

November 25, 2009 in Family, Kids, Time Goes By by Sara | 1 comment

Elena turned eight while we were away.

I’ll let you judge whether or not she had a good day.

Breakfast with Mickey and friends

Hair braiding with cool beads

Birthday kisses from her sister

A birthday cake delivered by a very handsome Italian. Perhaps I appreciated that more than she did.....

Card and picture signed by Micky and all his friends.

Card and picture signed by Mickey and all his friends.

What was waiting for her in our room.

Looks like eight is going to be a good year.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl. We love you even more than Mickey does.

Time Goes By: Part 4

November 3, 2009 in Family, Friends, Time Goes By by Sara | No comments

There are certain moments in your life when you look up from the business of living and realize that things have changed. That there has been a shift. And that it happened without you even being conscious of it.

This happened to me recently when I suddenly realized that we are no longer a family with small children. The days of strollers and sippy cups and preschool are well behind us. I no longer have to fix every meal for the girls or walk them to school or wash their hair.

I’ll have to say that while I occasionally miss those days, for the most part I have always been happy to move on to the next phase. I say a prayer for those parents I see trying to juggle two toddlers and a diaper bag while doing their shopping and I ALWAYS open the door for the mommy struggling with the stroller. Those are very tiring and trying years. And while when you get to the other side they feel as though they passed in a flash, sometimes in the moment, time seems to drag.

Some friends and I were talking about this new stage we are in the other day. We decided that every stage has its challenges. We talked about our marriages and how they are changing. One said that she thought it was easier to be married when the kids were smaller because you were just so busy that you didn’t have a lot of time to think about the relationship. You were just so happy to see him come in the door so you could hand over the screaming child (ren)! There just wasn’t a lot of time to think about you and your wants. You were just happy to be able to take a 10 minute walk around the block to clear your head.

But now that the kids are older and we are headed at a fast clip into middle age, we see that there is some reconfiguring of our relationships to do. And we get to do this all the while managing the challenges of middle school and high school and health issues and parents getting older. One friend said,

“Middle age is not for sissies.”

She’s right. But I would add that life in general is not for sissies. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it is really hard.

But if you are lucky like me, you have wonderful friends and family to go through all of the different stages of life. Friends who will encourage and listen and occasionally speak a hard truth into your life.

We aren’t meant to do it alone.

At any stage.

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