Thinking of you!

The day was long today. At one point I felt like a cat, soaking in the sun's warmth and stretching out on the deck. I sat, eyes closed, listening to all the kids playing out back, laughing and enjoying each other's quirkiness-a rarity around here lately! I smiled at Dylan, my not-quite-yet-2 year old as he attempted to squirt the big kids with his toy water gun, and remembered my own childhood. Much of what I remember of my childhood will never make it into this blog, but that's okay, the best parts are much more appropriate anyway. Lately I have been finding myself marveling at how quickly we grow up. As a child, the days are long, summers never-ending, friendships easy to make, and sometimes just as easy to leave behind. But now I realize just how slippery and wily this adulthood thing is, sneaking up on me while I was busy riding ponies and laying on beaches, unashamed of my bikini-clad self.
I think the memories that I am most fond of are both heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time. I remember endless days of summer, running through corn fields at my grandparent's house with what seemed like a clan of cousins and siblings. I remember playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, and creating theatrical masterpieces in which I would force my family to endure both as actors and audience. My Grandmother would give us each a quarter or two and walk us, like Julie Andrews through the mountains in The Sound of Music, up to the General Store where we'd buy candy for ourselves, Miller Lite for her. Don't judge, she was babysitting 6 kids all summer long and keeping up a farmhouse! I'm surprised we didn't make that trip twice a day! But I think of my cousins, Cheri, Kenny, Jason, JR, and my sister Mandy and myself and how close we all were then. The lot of us all squished in with my grandmother on hot summer nights in her queen sized bed watching Bewitched and making up ghost stories about the 100 year old farmhouse we were sleeping in. I remember being scared to death when my cousin JR would trick me into going down into the basement where the furnace grumbled and then run back up the stairs, locking the door and laughing like a hyeena at my screams until Cheri would come like a firecracker and free me. Girls against boys, right? It still feels that way sometimes, doesn't it?
And now I have to ponder, how did we evolve this far? How is it that I am a mother of 3? When did this happen?! Next month I will be celebrating my 9th wedding anniversary. My little sister now has 2 children, and my baby cousin Cheri is getting ready to have a baby herself! I am warmed by this, yet saddened with the knowledge that we have all lost so much. I haven't seen my cousins JR and Jason since Cheri's wedding, like 2 years ago, and even then - so much awkwardness! Little Kenny is a grown (young) man right now, and I can't even remember when I last saw him. Probably at the same wedding! Growing up, moving away, getting married, having babies. Gaining so very much and being so very blessed, yet feeling so very heavy-hearted.
I'm thinking of you all tonight. More importantly, I'm praying for all of you tonight. Cheri, I love you and know that you will be a wonderful mother.