Yup, it's me birthday. :-)
Before I get to all the gushy stuff...
LOVE The Beatles.
The music from the video below actually takes me back to when I was a young girl. I'm a Joisey Girl through and through but I haven't sounded Joisey in quite some time (living in another part of the country for a year does that to you ;-)).
I grew up in northeastern New Jersey, and all my cousins and aunts and uncles pretty much lived in that area. But what the music below really zeros in on are (of course) summers and pool parties. My dad's niece and her husband had a nice house with its allotted 1/10 of a square inch backyard (that's a Jersey joke; if you've ever lived here, I think you'll understand). They had a round, above-ground pool that took up most of that space, with the rest for chairs and a small grilling area. I had a ton of fun, and I look back on that time very wistfully. (This is why I rarely stroll down memory lane; the memories are too painful.)
The wistfulness comes from all those tons of cousins I used to see on a fairly regular basis and from all the aunts and uncles who have passed away. All the cousins have moved out of the area, they have their own families. (Think of the Jewish Diaspora, where all the Jewish tribes were blown to the winds.) And as I said, all of my aunts and uncles are gone. Anyone who wants to be immortal can have it - I can't handle the thought of having to deal with the death of loved ones over and over again for an eternity.
Sorry for the downer; this is supposed to be a happy day (and it is :-)). After all, I've made it to 49, more or less physically intact, my humor intact, my mental capacities...mostly intact ;-), and with my first book to go live by the end of the month (if all goes to plan).
So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, Theme From a Summer Place...
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5 comments:
Hey, happy birthday! :D We're almost the same age -- I'll be 48 in August.
I know what you mean about family. My grandmother had six sisters, and although my mom was an only child, I grew up surrounded by older relatives. Holidays meant a huge crowd, and Christmas was several days in a row at various houses to see different chunks of family. My grandmother's generation is all gone now, and I was never close to any of my cousins, who are all like mother's-mother's-sister's-kid's-kid, to put it in anthopological terms, since I don't remember the how the second-cousin-thrice-removed stuff works. Holidays are tiny now, me and my husband and my mom and brother, with maybe a friend or two over. It's different and kind of sad; I know what you mean about that.
Hope you have a great day, and get some excellent loot. :)
Angie
Summer place? Several isolated beaches along the lake. Thanks for the memories.
Clicked the button too soon after the phone interrupted.
It's nice of you to give a gift to others for your birthday.
Angie,
Cool that we're almost the same age. :-)
Holidays are tiny for me now, too, esp. at Christmas; it's over at my mom's condo, with me, my husband, one of my brothers and his family (2 really great kids - in college already - time passes in a blur ::sigh::).
It's not the same. We used to get together at my Aunt Stella's house (she's still alive...at 96!), a tiny thing with space about as big as your thumb! But I loved going there, seeing the cousins, the aunts, the uncles...I think we had about 60 people crammed into that dinky little place, lol.
My husband came at the very end of it but was able to enjoy being Santa. It was someone different any year, and he managed to do that for one of the last times we all got together before everyone started get married, having families, moving away...
Loot? Well, my husband took me out to breakfast (YUM!) and my mom sent me a check for $50 - good to put toward clothes, which I'll probably shop for this weekend. :-)
Thanks, Angie. Take care.
Kay,
Yes, memories. And we tend to remember the good ones, right? The ones that you think as a kid are going to go on forever.
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