The Good Ol' Days

My mother used to think a lot. And then she would talk to me about the things she thought.

I remember her once telling me that she had often in her life she has very often wished to be richer. And she has also looked toward the future and hoped that in the future she’d be richer. She admitted to sometimes resenting people who were richer. But she told me one thing she had never done is look back at her life and every thought that her memories would be any better, or that she would have been any happier if at that point in her life she had had more money.
She told me this shortly after I had graduated high school and was working two ridiculously hard jobs to which I had to wear super lame uniforms (one was a plastic apron and the other was…well… the letter “M”) for $4.25 an hour just to try to pay my Jr. College tuition and get some text books. And I was a pretty happy person. I remember thinking, and feeling, I swear to you, that I was pretty lucky. I was a pretty happy go lucky creature then, even when I was exhausted and covered in grease. And I felt like I was on top of the world and the whole future was stretched out before me like a spread of gifts under a Christmas tree. I was a bohemian spirit and loved the romance of just climbing a hill to eat a $3 meal and feel the wind and then maybe dance in the rain.

And then when I was first married, we loved to laugh at ourselves in the little dingy apartment we lived in, eating candle light dinners of pasta off of a card table. I don’t remember a day in my life, looking back now, that I can say would have been made better if we had been rich. None of the memories I cherish most about any of the parties we had, games we played, traditions we started (annual water fight), or adventures we went on had anything to do with what we had to spend. Through it all, I already knew I would look back on my 18 year old self, and my newly wed self and know, “Those were the good times.”

I do.

So here I am now. I am still pretty lucky. I am done with school and have a good job (thankfully) but I will confess, the last couple years had gotten easier, we had begun to grow fatter, and I was enjoying a bit of a princess status. With the split, my income has been split in half and somehow, a household of one adult is not much less expensive than one with two.

It’s what my mom said back then though. I do wish for a little more right now. I am not above that. I guess it’s human nature. And I hope things don’t feel so tight forever. I miss the things I got spoiled on being able to purchase and go do without a thought. I miss buying my daughter anything I see that I know she would like while I am out and about.

But I also figure, these are probably still the days. I am still young and strikingly beautiful. I still love to walk in the wind. Being alive still feels like a wonderful thing. Some of the packages are unwrapped and revealed, but there are still shiny boxes under the tree with surprises inside.
And Elsa still readily admits to being my baby, I can still lift her and rock her in my arms, she still likes me to sing her to sleep, she still thinks I know everything just cause I am a mom, and she still thinks my shoes are cool.

And I have had do find more creative activities to do with her…which has led to more time to get to know her in a different day. We talk more when we are cruising the pet store (it’s free) than we did when we went to the movies all the time. I cook her more meals now that eating out has gotten to be too much of a luxury.

I know THESE are the good old days.

Some of the first memories I have are of the days my mother used to walk me down to the “little store.” It was a liquor store about a half mile from our apartment. (If you are from Utah and not California, calm down. Convenience stores sell alcohol in California so we call them that but they also sell other things. I used the term liquor store to my mother-in-law once and she almost choked!) This little store had a small grocery section, a large candy section, and a deli. They sold corn dogs for a few cents. There was no greater treat than a walk down there to get a corn dog. In fact, corn dogs still hold the same place in my heart held by cookies and milk in the hearts of others.

I also remember sitting on the lawn of the apartment complex we lived in, in the summer, after dark, and the adults talked and played games while the children played on the play ground all night (which was really probably till nine or ten pm). Some nights this summer, Elsa has come in from outside where all the kids are still playing well after dusk, and has told me “I stayed out till way late!”

I hope when she’s all grown up, she remembers how great our life was when she was six.