It's a little hard to know where to start tonight. The thoughts are swirling just a bit.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" How many times did people ask me that question?

How many times did I answer them truly believing that some day I would "grow up"?

Answer: Zero.

Because guess what? We're all grown up now! There it is--smack dab in front of my face as undeniable as tomorrow's sunrise. I'm grown up. And I'm not the only one! :) Class of '79. We have kids that are "grown up" and trying to decide what it is that they want to do with themselves and their lives. Our in-between time has been filled with the rather mundane aspects of life that seem so insignificant, but turn out to be the small stitches in the fabric of our own lives and in the lives of those we love. It is an amazing concept, that paying the electricity bill tonight will keep the lights burning so that the young one can read before bed and discover that s/he wants to know more about architecture and starts down the road that leads to a drafting career. And maybe that will be a average drafting career, or maybe that light over the bed of the youngster is switching on the genius of someone like Frank Lloyd Wright. How do we know? We don't. We just pay the electricity bill and let the rest happen. We do our best to hand down our values and help the kids learn from our mistakes and successes but in the end, they choose. They make a life that they pass down to their children, and the cycle goes on and on and on.

I'm not sure that our "grown up" lives are as we imagined they'd be. Mine isn't. Not that we're disappointed with them; I didn't get that feeling at all. It's just that teenagers grow up thinking they're going to be so different than the people who came before them (i.e. parents), and here we are with bills and houses and jobs and worries much the same as those who came before.

How do you tell the kids how quickly it passes in a way that will make them stop and listen? I don't know how many times my mother said, "Once you get out of high school, the time just flies." I heard her, but I didn't understand her. Not back then anyway.

Would I make different choices if I could go back? How can there be an answer to that? To go back and do it over would erase some of the most precious, breathtaking, heart-searching moments of the life I've lived. I do wish I had known how important it was to love what you do. I tell that to my boys over and over again. Having a job you love is such a blessing. And the job I've loved most has been teaching them. But that job will come to an end and then what? I have a rather lengthy laundry list of things I'd like to do, and I'm beginning to see that I need to write them down and start planning now how to make them happen. (Wow, now where have I heard that before?) Because before you know it, we'll be meeting for that 50 year reunion to discuss grandkids, and by golly, I do want to be there. With bells on.

I want to laugh and cry all at the same time. (Is this a mid-life crisis? )

I also discovered last night that it is so true what Without a Trace investigations and "follow in the footsteps" illustrations draw on: A person's gait is something that in unique and travels with him/her through life. I imagine that precludes any injuries that result in a limp. I could have recognized some of my old classmates just by watching them walk. With others it was the smile. Others I would have passed by on the street and never guessed I had once known them.

The night was much like the fireworks. Beautiful, explosive [inwardly, for me], a curious mixture where light depends on darkness, and is all too quickly over, leaving me wanting more.

I have to say that Glencoe really did a fabulous fireworks show. I believe it is the best I've seen in a long time. And the funny thing is, every now and then I dream of crossing those railroad tracks out by where the old cotton gin was and all of the sudden drawing a blank. That area shows up in my dreams, just like the road that curved around to the entrance to our subdivision on Greystone Road. Now I have an impression to fill in after I cross the tracks. It will be interesting to see if that is incorporated the next time I encounter it.

I'm also wondering how soon I'll have that recurring dream about not really having graduated. That at this late date they discovered that I'm half a credit shy and have to give back my diploma. LOL! Glory be--the things I've learned outside those years in a classroom would fill volumes. There's nothing that teaches quite as well as experience.

This life of ours is strangely wonderful. And too precious to be wasted.