Rewind The Tape, Please...

It's funny how the memory works...I just wish that our memories were like the old video tapes we used to have in the 70's.   Rewind the tape and see things in order, as many times as we want.

I received a phone call tonight from my aunt, telling me about the death of another, older aunt.  In her 90's, my aunt had a very rich life, made fuller by the nine kids she bore and the farm she helped to run.  I feel badly for her kids -losing your Mom must be awful - but selfishly, I'm sadder about how time is going so quickly and how things change.

She was my Dad's older sister and since my Dad's death, our time with her family hasn't been what it used to be.  We've all grown up and gone different directions...and that's sad...but without the older generation "glue" holding us together, it was inevitable and that's even sadder.  

But we're blessed to have the gift of memory.  That city slicker/country cousin "tape" would be a lot of fun to watch now, if it only worked that way.  The city slicker kids of my branch of the family always knew that if we went to "the farm", we were in for adventures.  And the country kids from the other branch of the family never disappointed!  The sheer number of the kids in that family guaranteed it.

Whether it was swimming in a pond (something totally unique to kids used to swimming at a public pool in Lindenwald) ....swinging on ropes in the barn (that about caused our Dad to have a coronary) ... throwing pitch forks at bales of hay (another coronary for Bob) ...chasing after farm animals... chemistry set experiments before we were ready for them... Gosh, we had a lot of mischievous fun with those cousins!

The country cousins seemed to have a freedom that we lacked...maybe because they so greatly outnumbered their parents...maybe the size of the farm aided their getting away with stuff...maybe we city kids were more sheltered than we should have been.  I just know our cousins probably thought we were wimps when we were there...and I remember the scoldings we got in the car, on the way home.

Life isn't a video machine, sadly...and different happenings in our lives can't be re-wound.  But if all that were true, I know one of those "tapes" that would be played plenty.  And those fun, exciting days with our country cousins would come to life again...and be missed.