Do You Remember the Way it Used to Be?

You know that feeling you get when you’re looking at old pictures?

I’m not quite sure what the feeling is, exactly. It’s hard to pin down. It’s almost sad, but at the same time it’s happy. It's bittersweet, I guess. It’s sort of wistful, but sometimes it’s almost even an ache in the pit of your stomach.

Do you know that feeling? Do you have pictures like that? The ones that show people you love, places you liked, your mom when she looked like you do now, your old favorite toys, grainy Polaroid Christmas mornings, your dad in plaid bellbottoms – times when you were happy (or at least thought you were happy?)

After some retrospective thinking, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not homesick for WHERE I used to be, but for HOW things used to be.

What’s that called? Thensick? Oldsick?

This past week I made a slideshow for my daddy’s birthday. It spanned the years from before he was born up until a couple of months ago. I watched it with him and I ended up crying during the section when it showed me as a little girl. Something about seeing myself at the ages that my own children are now really touched an emotional chord in me.

I miss going places with him. I miss sitting in the rocking chair with him and reading stories. I miss listening to him play his guitar; I miss knowing that he’s just down the hall. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this 36-year-old woman misses kissing her daddy goodnight.

I miss spending Sunday afternoons at his mother’s (my Grandma Ila’s) house. I miss sitting around on her shiny brocade aqua-colored couch and listening to her and my daddy talk while I snuggled against him with my head on a peach and cream candle-wicked throw pillow. I miss sitting on her kitchen counter, dangling my legs over the side and singing songs to her while she made chicken patties and poured us some 7Up. I miss playing Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button? and the little “clubhouse” my cousins and I made in the creepy old basement. I miss watching everyone play volleyball in the backyard and I miss the big Christmas dinners and wrapping paper fights.

I miss the way things used to be.

I don’t know, maybe all this reminiscing is getting to me because my own birthday is coming up. I realize that everything wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and I know that some of those smiling faces hid deeper hurts that the camera couldn’t show.

But today is fading into the past moment by moment, and the camera on my iPhone can’t catch everything.

Maybe I miss being a kid; it certainly didn’t last very long. It was nice to take a moment and remember how much my parents loved me when I was a little girl. Now my kids are growing up at warp speed – it seems like time is going by almost as fast as it did in that slideshow.

I hope that one day when my children are remembering “how it used to be,” they will also remember just how much I loved them.