Time travel

I would love to go back in time and yell at my younger self for wanting to make time go by faster. We spend so much of our youth wishing we were older and more grown up, longing for more responsibility and less homework and chores. I used to go to sleep hoping I would wake up all grown up with a husband and a house and nobody telling me what to do.

Bah! Silly younger me, what was I thinking?? Now that I have surpassed the age that I was wishing to be and am at a point that younger me would undoubtedly call OLD, I realize how crazy those wishes were. You always have homework, chores, and somebody telling you what to do. These are things that never go away.

I remember sitting with my friends talking about what we were going to do when we “grow up” and how we would never be like our parents. As time goes on, I realize that being a little like my mom would be a wonderful thing. My mom is a strong woman who was able to take care of a home and a child on her own for many years. I was not an easy child do live with and didn’t even like living with myself most of the time, but somehow she did it. She put up with a lot from me and every morning I still knew that no matter what I said the day before, she still loved me. I don’t know how, but she always loved me. When I was in my early twenties and out on my own, trying to make that teenage me proud, I remember apologizing to my mom for how horrible I had been during those younger years. Things were not as easy as I thought they would be and I still had people to answer to and more chores than I could shake a broom handle at.

Now I find myself wondering how that 15 year old Dee would feel if she could see me now. I’m sure she would be shocked at the fact that I am 30 and not a millionaire, or at least married to one. I like to think that she would sit and listen to me explain how stupid a lot of her behavior is and that she should just buckle down and get her grades up (now who’s dreaming?). We spent some time this weekend with my husband’s niece who is 13. She was telling us about “nuggeting” which apparently involves turning someone’s backpack inside-out and then putting all of their stuff back in it before zipping it up. The way it looks flipped around like that makes it look like a nugget, hence the name. This conversation made me think there would be no sense in talking to 15 year old me, because we all have to go against the grain at some point, we just have to hope we have someone there to love us through it.

At this point I’m not wishing the years away, I’m begging the seconds to stay. My wishing isn’t working, but this list is forcing me to try to enjoy at least one moment of every day. I say try because it isn’t always easy, as anyone with a pulse can tell you. There are days when I don’t feel like going to work or I don’t want to make dinner, when I wish I could be that 15 year old girl again. In those moments I often look at my husband and he brings me back and takes some of that angst away. I may be well beyond the rebellious stage of 15, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have my moments of defiance, but there he is in the morning wiping our slates clean and showing that he loves me as my mother did before him.