Just Living
My best friend and I have been friends for over 30 years. We met in high school. We had the same English class together. 9th grade English. Our teacher was Sister Thomas. We went to a Catholic High School right out of a Catholic grade school. We went to separate grade schools ten minutes away from each other.
I remember walking into that class not knowing anyone, my best friend from grade school, was in another class. So, there I was alone and a little nervous about a new school and new teachers. I sat across the room from her. She sat with some girls she went to grade school with on the noisy side of the room. Sister Thomas immediately moved old friends away from each other and that is how we became new friends. She moved her to my side of the room in the row next to me. I am not sure who said what to whom but after a week in that class together we became fast friends. We stayed friends all through high school and to this day she knows more about me then almost anyone else on the planet.
We were talking about the upcoming holidays, Christmas in particular, and both of us are financially strapped to say the least so needless to say there aren't going to be a lot of store brought gifts going to anyone this year from either of us. Then we started to remember Christmases past. One Christmas in particular. We were in our early 20's no older then 24. We thought that we had the world at our feet. We could do anything. We both had good jobs making plenty of money for us. She had just moved out of her parents house and had her own place, our hang out. So, that year we decided to shop together for gifts for our families. We had the time of our lives going to the mall in all the stores we could find, twice, looking mostly and occasionally finding the perfect gift for someone on our list. We even thought about taking a picture with Santa but we thought that would be doing too much. So, we passed on that but we didn't pass on singing Christmas Carol's with some group that was outside at the time. I know they probably thought we were completely crazy and we were a little in a good way. We passed a store with a sale on bows, the colored bows that you put on packages, the sale was for 50% off and we got ten bags each of bows and laughed thinking about how all the gifts we were going to wrap was going to have 20 bows on them.
We'd drive around in the car and just look at the Christmas lights that people had their houses decorated with and act like kids pointing and admiring each house and mentally taking notes for the future for our houses. There was one house that we would look at every year in the hills. They had a nice Christmas scene and thousands of lights that lit up the block almost. The whole block was lit up nicely. That was our favorite house and we vowed to take our kids there when we had them to admire the lights too. Yeah, we did some big planning back then.
So, fast forward to today. My friend and I both turned 50 this year. She teased me cause my birthday was 3 months before hers. I told her she would catch up in no time and she did. We both have kids now. Her daughter is 20. My son is going to be 9. Needless to say our plans of having our kids grow up together kind of didn't happen since she had hers way before me. Seems that most of our plans had different ideas and didn't happen for us. We both live in places we rather not be, both are financially struggling, she had to take an early retirement from her job, and as for me...well, let's just say I am just making ends meet barely. No early retirement for me. We were chatting and she said what happened to us? I asked her what she met. She said that 25 years ago we were better off, we were young and happy. I told her that is true we were young and happy and carefree for the most part. I told her that we just grew up and grew older.
No, life is not what we expected it to be at 50 when our 24 year old selves were planning on having our dreams come true with all the material comforts that money could buy. That is where our heads were back then I told her. Now, of course all that we dreamed of at 24 didn't really come true in the ways we thought they would but in another way they did. Sure, I told her, we might not be rich with material things and money but we are in other ways, we both have happy healthy kids, we both have our mothers and she has her dad too, we lived and we have learned. And our life is not over yet. We might not have the life we wanted but we have to live the life we have now. And I reminded her that we were 24 there was something else that we vowed not to do and that was when we turned 50 we would not become old and cranky and so far I have kept my end of the bargain. I refuse to be cranky and I am going to live the life that I have.
Told her that old saying we might not be where we want to be but just count your blessings that we sure aren't where we used to be either. So, lets get on with the business of living the next 50 years!
I remember walking into that class not knowing anyone, my best friend from grade school, was in another class. So, there I was alone and a little nervous about a new school and new teachers. I sat across the room from her. She sat with some girls she went to grade school with on the noisy side of the room. Sister Thomas immediately moved old friends away from each other and that is how we became new friends. She moved her to my side of the room in the row next to me. I am not sure who said what to whom but after a week in that class together we became fast friends. We stayed friends all through high school and to this day she knows more about me then almost anyone else on the planet.
We were talking about the upcoming holidays, Christmas in particular, and both of us are financially strapped to say the least so needless to say there aren't going to be a lot of store brought gifts going to anyone this year from either of us. Then we started to remember Christmases past. One Christmas in particular. We were in our early 20's no older then 24. We thought that we had the world at our feet. We could do anything. We both had good jobs making plenty of money for us. She had just moved out of her parents house and had her own place, our hang out. So, that year we decided to shop together for gifts for our families. We had the time of our lives going to the mall in all the stores we could find, twice, looking mostly and occasionally finding the perfect gift for someone on our list. We even thought about taking a picture with Santa but we thought that would be doing too much. So, we passed on that but we didn't pass on singing Christmas Carol's with some group that was outside at the time. I know they probably thought we were completely crazy and we were a little in a good way. We passed a store with a sale on bows, the colored bows that you put on packages, the sale was for 50% off and we got ten bags each of bows and laughed thinking about how all the gifts we were going to wrap was going to have 20 bows on them.
We'd drive around in the car and just look at the Christmas lights that people had their houses decorated with and act like kids pointing and admiring each house and mentally taking notes for the future for our houses. There was one house that we would look at every year in the hills. They had a nice Christmas scene and thousands of lights that lit up the block almost. The whole block was lit up nicely. That was our favorite house and we vowed to take our kids there when we had them to admire the lights too. Yeah, we did some big planning back then.
So, fast forward to today. My friend and I both turned 50 this year. She teased me cause my birthday was 3 months before hers. I told her she would catch up in no time and she did. We both have kids now. Her daughter is 20. My son is going to be 9. Needless to say our plans of having our kids grow up together kind of didn't happen since she had hers way before me. Seems that most of our plans had different ideas and didn't happen for us. We both live in places we rather not be, both are financially struggling, she had to take an early retirement from her job, and as for me...well, let's just say I am just making ends meet barely. No early retirement for me. We were chatting and she said what happened to us? I asked her what she met. She said that 25 years ago we were better off, we were young and happy. I told her that is true we were young and happy and carefree for the most part. I told her that we just grew up and grew older.
No, life is not what we expected it to be at 50 when our 24 year old selves were planning on having our dreams come true with all the material comforts that money could buy. That is where our heads were back then I told her. Now, of course all that we dreamed of at 24 didn't really come true in the ways we thought they would but in another way they did. Sure, I told her, we might not be rich with material things and money but we are in other ways, we both have happy healthy kids, we both have our mothers and she has her dad too, we lived and we have learned. And our life is not over yet. We might not have the life we wanted but we have to live the life we have now. And I reminded her that we were 24 there was something else that we vowed not to do and that was when we turned 50 we would not become old and cranky and so far I have kept my end of the bargain. I refuse to be cranky and I am going to live the life that I have.
Told her that old saying we might not be where we want to be but just count your blessings that we sure aren't where we used to be either. So, lets get on with the business of living the next 50 years!
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