I know I have a few “long-time, since-the-beginning” readers of Suburban Scrawl out there, and I figured that–on this very special weekend for our family–you might as well feel old like I do. You know, since you’ve been around. When I started blogging here at Suburban Scrawl in 2007, my younger son was twelve years old and in the sixth grade. Today, he is eighteen and a high school graduate. Who wants to go grab some dinner? I hear they have pretty good early-bird specials at 4:30. Then we can watch the news and head to bed early. (Also, thanks–TO ALL OF YOU–for reading and following my family’s adventures.)
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The Post That’s Not About How Time Flies, Even Though It Does
I have written many times about how quickly time flies. That’s not what this post is about, though I can’t write about life’s milestones from my perspective as a forty-something mom of an eighteen-year-old and a nearly-twenty-one-year-old without inadvertently injecting a little bit of that sentiment. I mean, at this very moment in this very house we’re preparing for the fact that the kid in this picture, the one on the right who it seems was just starting preschool yesterday, is graduating from high school this Sunday. This being our second time around the block with this graduation business and his being a different kid, I’m not at all surprised…
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Lilacs
For the better part of the 70s, my family lived in a duplex in the south suburbs of Chicago. I remember lots of moments from the carefree years spent there: I had a very happy childhood and thinking back on those days always makes me smile. I don’t know if the neighborhood was “full of kids”, though I had several good friends who lived practically within arms’ reach. One of my best friends at the time lived a few doors down, one lived in the other half of our duplex, and two others lived in the two duplexes behind us, across an expansive lawn that ran behind the houses like…
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I Was Here First.
This conversation actually happened at the base of the Marina City towers (my lifelong dream home) over the weekend: D: I would love to live here. Me: I would love to live here. I have wanted to live here since I was a kid. D: Well, you’ve only wanted to live here longer than me because you’re… Me: Because I’m…OLDER???? *rolling eyes* I KNOW. I’m older. I was here first. D: Anyway, I want to live here. Me: Sigh.
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The Other Side
I had just turned eighteen the month before Jim and I were married. When I moved to Norfolk, Virginia–where he was stationed for sea duty–we rented a townhouse off of the Naval base in a military family-only subdivision. That neighborhood proved to be something wonderful for me, a much-younger-than-average new bride whose husband would be going out to sea for weeks and months at a time. In the first four years we were married, he was gone for more than two-and-a-half years. It was okay, though. Even though it was difficult to be apart at the time (this was before cell phones and internet!), my being left at home alone…