Being a Kid...
What did it mean to be a kid back in the 60's ? Moving up to an oil furnace . Driving around town in my Dad's brand new 63 galaxie 500 . Meeting with the old guy down the street for milk and cookies in his kitchen by myself: My parents never met him and that was O.K. Taking two different busses in Ottawa to piano lessons with my 8 year sister when I was six years old. Seemingly some kid in many neighborhoods wearing leg braces: Polio... The sweet sounds of early Motown on the radio
late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. Forever playing with other kids all day long somewhere out there with no adults in sight until suppertime. We made our own rules of co-existence, organised our own games and used long forgotten terminology and phrases such as " fair fighting " or " Johnny and Mary ( any names will suffice ) sittin in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g.
first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage..." A time when children ran free, watched one black and white channel on T.V. ( if you had one ) No porno videos, no Howard Stern, just that tough kid down the block who swore, not to communicate so much as a badge of his status. It was a time of innocence that is lost ...and no...it cannot be recreated. The poster says now " It takes a Communiy to Raise a Child " . Back when I was a kid, the poster would have been pointless, everyone just lived that way.

The Bug...

There are things your kids might not forgive you for, but I hope this isn't one of them.
The nickname given to Meredith as a baby was " The Bug ". At many points when she was a baby, we stopped calling her
Meredith and simply said things like, " whoops we can't leave yet, I forgot to put the bug in the car.
Life is a series of transitions. First it was my kids going to school for the first time. Kindergarten:
out of my sight , with someone else during the day. Then adolescence, camps: gone for a week.
basketball tournaments in another city overnight in the states. Now my daughter in Europe who has returned.
I love her dearly, I miss her when she is not here and I love spending time with her. I can see... me ,... her mom,
the Irish and the Scot come out in her at different times and I celebrate all of those things ( yes, the scottish bits too )
I am so proud of Meredith ( bug ) and the new relationship that we are building.
But...I now know that there is new adulthood about her that creates a new sense of ownership in her own life.
It is a new sense of separation that makes us strangely closer in a different way now. She is the pathfinder, the "trailblazer"
if you will, for the other children I have. They too will experience this even if they return and live close to me or with
me during their college years. Then I will have a transition because of the so much and so many years that have been poured into them at close proximity. I will look over my shoulder and see that they are gone...No they haven't left the love of their father and they are very loyal in all of this, but their lives are so much more theirs and so yes...they are gone.
THAT will be a much more challenging time of transition for me than raising them ever was.