I'm
not sure who said it, but, the old saying about not being able to go home again
is not quite true. You can! It's just that when you do, you find that all the
locks have been changed and the canyons and vestibules that once served as
playgrounds for searching youthful minds have been boarded up and covered with
Ninja Turtle graffiti. That is enough to stop most people from going home again.
But, it's not enough to stop Mary.
Mary
grew up as the snot-nose, bratty little sister of my best friend, Gary. As it is
with all younger siblings, she was in the way more than we would have liked.
Being seen and not heard wasn't enough for us. Gary and I wanted her gone! There
didn't seem to be any escape from her, though, as Mary and my equally obnoxious
little sister, another Mary, also became friends.
Time
passes on for all of us and mother nature plays this cruel joke on us by forcing
us to endure the incongruity of childhood, the ulcerated days of puberty, and
the befuddling years of adolescence. All the while she expects us to grow up,
too. Talk about demanding parents! It's no wonder there are so many screwed-up
adults walking around!
Mary
is not one of them, though. Somehow she came through all of the cruelty mom
nature threw at her, smiling and laughing through it all. I am not sure when it
happened, but somewhere along the way the bratty little sister became a pretty, charming
and delightful lady, maintaining her focus on the future while appreciating her
ties to the past. I guess that's why it didn't surprise me when she announced
that she would be coming home to get married in the church in the old
neighborhood where we grew up.
Mary, like me, went away to college. While most of our friends stayed at
home, Mary and I did not. When we graduated, we moved away , 200 miles in
opposite directions, and out to follow different dreams. Mary and I had common
experiences that we shared on occasions over Irish coffee, talking about where
we came from, and where we had arrived. And, with more than a little
trepidation, we talked about where we were headed. We were happy where we were.
Still, there was a special feeling we both had when we walked along the beach or
down the streets of the old neighborhood, especially when we walked
together.
Now,
as Mary gets married, we both come home to those streets, to the church where we
were baptized and confirmed, and to the place where foundations were laid, and
dreams first born. There is much that is still the same. There is so much that
has changed. In spite of the words of Rod Stewart (with many thanks to Bob
Dylan), things have not stayed forever
young.
Mary
has hit her early thirties and I am getting closer than I want to be to forty
something. That may not be old enough to send us on a permanent trip down memory
lane, but, it is enough to bring on a few nostalgic moments when childhood
friends get together. When one of them is getting married, well,...I guess that
just makes the moments last a little longer.
They
play a lot of tear-jerking songs at weddings. You can always hear songs like
Danny Boy; Sunrise, Sunset, and others that can start half the invited
quests to turn on the water works while the other half play with empty boxes of
Alerest in feeble attempts to con the rest of us into thinking that it is the
pollen in the air causing their eyes to water.
People say that the tears are tears of joy and I'm sure there is some truth
to that. I think, however, that a lot of the tears shed are tears of regret and
lost days. There is no going back. Weddings drive home that point in a kind of strange
and sad way.
For
me, along with the regrets, are tears of pride. I look around at our parents and
see them looking at their kids, (and in many cases, their grandkids), as only
proud parents and grandparents can. They see the values and mores they taught us
are still worn proudly, even when we are many miles away and they aren't there
every day hounding us about them.
They don't look at our friends anymore with that incisive
glare of just an acceptable tolerance level of a bad influence. Now it with a
cultivated and nurtured appreciation, and with thoughts that friends are indeed an important part of the
extended family. They know we could have done worse in choosing our friends, but
we didn't.
As I
look around and talk with friends I have not seen in such a long time, I realize
that we all have a right to be proud. We have grown and become. We have
created new
traditions while carrying on with traditions handed down to us by our parents
and friends.
The vast majority of us serve as an example that there is hope for
society.
How
did we survive the incongruity, ulcerated days, and befuddling years? Well, the
only way I know is that we did it together. We had the good sense to choose each
other as friends, and, although miles may separate the body today, they do not
separate the spirit. If going home to get married or to attend a wedding can
remind you of that, then going home is a good thing to do. We should all do it
more often.
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