♪ The Way We Were ♪

So I'm listening to Barbra Streisand sing, at the Oscars last night...singing for the first time at the Oscars in 36 years. The last time she sang I had my first crush on Jon. We were 10, going on 11. HA

" Memories, light the corners of my mind Misty watercolor memories of the way we were. Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind smiles we give to one another for the way we were. Can it be that it was all so simple then or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again tell me would we? Could we? Memories... may be beautiful and yet what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget...So it's the laughter we will remember whenever we remember the way we were. The way we were. "

I got misty-eyed listening to her... and more than a little wistful.

Every now and then, I miss my family. Not my boys, or my mom -- or her twin, since they have yet to grow weary of me and set me aside, or they love me enough to not do so. I miss my dad, but in a vague sort of way now that he's actually passed away. I missed him fiercely all those years, hoping for some sort of re-connection, and now that it's gone forever, it's more sentimental at best.

I miss the family I grew up with.  We still talk to each other... but I'm on the outside.

My outspoken, overzealous self painted me out of the family picture more than a few times, and now I'm pretty much out of frame. Either my multiple apologies for erratic behavior fell on deaf ears or worse, were never listened to in the first place. I've tried.

My first impulse this morning was to write to those who have set me aside, hoping to re-establish a semblance of relationship... but then I remembered I gave up co-dependence for Lent, HA.

Gave it up for good.

I have my memories. One of my nieces is expecting her first baby, and I wish I could share that with her, but I'm unforgivable. Sooo... I remember her as a little girl playing with my boys, a headstrong teenager vying for attention between her sisters ( I know how ThAT felt HA ). I remember happy family times with all of our children playing and laughing together. I miss her, and her mother, and sisters, and her brother and his family, but they are content without my infrequent presence in their lives. Her brother, the father of four boys, had one of them sit down and write a letter to another sibling about the things he liked about them.

Good advice. Wishing it would carry across the family, to me... but it doesn't. Oh well.  "So it's the laughter... we will remember.."

I have my memories of one who gathered all the family in on holidays, handled our anxious grandmother ( across town from her), before and after my ever-patient grandfather passed away. I have her recipes, the wooden clogs she sent me from Holland as a little girl, the reverence of worship that she taught me without preaching a word. I offended her one too many times with my political views, and multiple attempts at reconciliation have gone by the wayside. I guess I'm one of those memories that's "too painful to remember.. we simply choose to forget..."

I know some families don't stay close once everyone has grown up and moved on and such...but some do. And some of my family is close to the others. Just not to me. :-( That's where the wistfulness sprang from last night.

Like the baggage I spoke of in my last blog, we can either carry it, set it aside, or consider it a burden. I just remember the good stuff these days...but wish it was reciprocal. "Misty watercolor memories of the way we were. Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind smiles we give to one another for the way we were."

We were fun, once, and loving, and close. Thank God for memories, and for  the way we were. :-)