Validation of life

Last night was one of the most wonderful yet strange nights of my life.  While waiting for Wayne to get home to eat the birthday dinner I did not prepare...story for another blog...I was just wandering around aimlessly on facebook and started typing in names from my past.  All of the sudden, I found Jamie Carmell...she had been one of my best friends when I was a little girl...pre-kindergarten through 5th grade.  I sent her a message to confirm it was really her and it was!  Then I found Laura Beck...another close friend...and from there it snow balled and I found websites for several of my childhood friends and the town I lived in, Glencoe Illinois....it was amazing.  It was so exciting to find them.  But what was most interesting to me was the feelings that overcame me and the absolute flood of memories that bombarded my head.  I saw Sandy Simon and immediately, I was back at her house at a birthday party that we wore costumes to for some reason.  I had gone as Oliver Twist and we were dancing to "Dizzy" in her living room...like it happened yesterday.  I saw Karen Haas and I was at her house looking at her caged Monkey...smelling so terrible listening to "Lucy in the Skies With Diamonds".  I saw Elizabeth Edwards and I went back to her house to a birthday party where her mother told me I looked just like an Afghan dog.  I was spending the night at Jamie's house playing super model with her fancy phones....cuz she was really rich! and eating bagels with cream cheese and jelly.  I was at Stephi Shaffer's house trying on each other's training bras and feeling like we were such women.  I was at Laurie Beck's house looking at the shrimp that they grew in a nasty tank in the kitchen and playing the Game of Life with her brother Bobby who was stuck in a body cast and listening to the radio with him.  I was just overcome with memories and feelings and I found myself smiling and giggling.  It was ridiculous.  Wayne and I sat up half the night looking at pictures.  I know he was bored.  Tough.  It was amazing for me.  It was like a second life that I lead had become real.  Like finding out that what you thought was a dream was reality.  I felt validated, like what I always remembered really did happen and was not just my imagination.  All of these people are a part of my life that NOBODY who I currently associate with know anything about at all so they didn't seem real to me either.  It was an awakening that I can't get enough of.  I have now wasted half of this day searching and reading and waiting for my application to be accepted so that I can be a part of the Glencoe Illinois Central School Class of 73 profile so I can really connect with the past.  Then, the fear sets in.  What if these people don't remember me.  I am sure that as I read names, there are people I should know and their names on the paper mean nothing to me.  What if I am that person....meaning nothing to anyone.  Scary, but worth the risk.  If they don't know me, I will look at their pictures and laugh at them anyway.  Bring on the past...I am ready for it.  .  I know how the past ends...it ends in now...The future is a whole different story...who knows how the future ends? 

Paco Must Dance

Today is my sweet husband's birthday...54.  What the heck?  I met this man when he was an acne faced, glasses wearing skinny bowl legged young kid of 17...and his smile melted my heart.  It truly was love at first sight.  I know, I know...corny at best, and not likely at worst...but true none the less.  My friend Paula introduced us, standing in the parking lot of Scottsdale High School in October of 1974.  He was wearing a yellow checked shirt and jeans and horrid horrid brown two tone shoes...they were awful.  But, he was perfect.  He gave me a ride home that evening, and all I wanted was to never leave him.  Granted, there were more than a few struggles going on at home at that time...so escape and distraction was a good thing.  But, safety and acceptance was so much more than escape and distraction.  It fit like a soft warm sweater and yet held the excitement of falling backwards off a cliff.  I didn't want to leave him.
I could write for days about the passing 31+ years that have been filled with happiness and sorrow...struggle and success...all of the typical "stuff" that marriages go through.  But today, I just want him to have a happy birthday.  I want him to know I am happy he was born 54 years ago. I would thank his mom, if she was alive to tell, for bringing this child into the world for me to know and love.  Unquestionably my best friend, my greatest cheerleader (minus the dorky outfit and mega phone), my most reliable confidant, and my love.  Happy Birthday to my high school sweet heart who remains my sweetheart into old age as well.  Hope there are another 54 for us to celebrate.  And so, Paco must dance...I will not disappoint Paco!