The Good Old Days

“The Good old days”

This time of year tends to lead me to nostalgia, thinking about the “good old days”.  I often find myself reminiscing about holidays passed.  The magic and anticipation of youth, the month-long break and time reconnecting with family and friends through my college years.  Life seemed slower and there seemed to be more time to soak in the holidays.

 My thoughts continue to wander through my life’s timeline to Nichole and my first Christmas together in NY, when she moved here from NH.  We had been living four hours apart for eighteen months.  Once again, I was brought back to that youthful anticipation of the holidays, this time with the gift being having Nichole nearby on a permanent basis.  As my mind wanders, I remember, Christmas-time when Nichole was pregnant with Shamus.  She was due any day and once again our anticipation was at its height.

Then there was Shay’s first Christmas, a short time later, Simon’s first Christmas and then a blur of all the holiday seasons when the boys were small.  The magic had re-surfaced!  Now with the boys becoming young men and the magic losing a bit of luster I find myself thinking about all the years, longing to be able to recapture them.  But I don’t spend long thinking about the past.  We have always savored and celebrated our time together.   I have great memories of all the holidays from my youth, through young adulthood, to our time with our growing family.  I know I am truly blessed to have so many wonderful holiday moments to look back on.                                                                                                                                             

I also recognize that the boys are getting closer to having their own post high school lives (in the future that seems to be coming too soon and faster and faster every day).  The moments we are experiencing right now with them, will soon be looked at as the “good old days”.   In fact, each step along the way has become a good old day!  The magic and moments have changed but they are still there.  We may not read stories together at bed time any more, but now we have meaningful family conversations around the dinner table.  Those moments we share now are today’s “good old days”. 

I have found the most important thing is to not think about the time gone by and long to reclaim it.  Rather, we should view the time now as the gift that it is and know that if we live and celebrate each of these moments to its fullest, they too will soon be looked at as the good old days.