In my life, I must have heard the term ‘life was simpler then’ more times than I can remember. I don’t even mean the “life” out there in the world. I just pertain to the personal side of life in the family. Now often oddly feeling on the outside looking in, I am listening to my nephews and nieces talk about their new grandchildren (newborns at that) and it gets me thinking. I might as well be a picture on the wall…looking down and silently observing the goings-on in the room before me. I too, vividly recall that there had been a time when they were proudly chatting about the antics of their children. Funny, these ‘children’ now had babies of their own.
Time was when I was looking at my parents’ beaming smiles and hearing their funny-sounding baby talk as they each beheld the long line of babies before them, proudly presented by me and my siblings through all those years in the ancestral house. Them our beloved old guards are sadly gone now, along with my hardy grandparents, who once upon a time, surely smiled too when we, their infant “apos” first came into their black and white world. Yup, that might qualify as a ‘ life was simpler then’ kind of moment.
At another time, during one sober meeting with old friends and some high school classmates, the subject on grandchildren came up and I immediately thought, what a bunch of old farts we have all turned into. Aside from getting childishly-animated all of a sudden, one could also feel the arthritic spell that once draped our dinner table virtually fly out of the room. I reckon the subject of babies can always do that to anybody. I’ve seen old people at countless gatherings, standing erect and stoic in their depiction of what had transpired in their work, their art and accomplishments. Their transformation is almost magical the moment one whips out a wallet to show pics of grandchildren. In that sense, we’ve become fave subjects of memes when this happens.
Looking back, I guess it’s really true that one’s got to start somewhere to appreciate where one stands at the moment. As the song goes… “Let’s start at the very beginning, A very good place to start…”
First, you have a baby of your own and if not, nephews and nieces. Then, the time eventually comes when they have their own children. Much later still, these rugrats too have their own. Without you noticing it, you’ve turned old and it’s only the child within you that’s looking out of that frame.
Funny now, while aware that these nieces and nephews, childhood friends and classmates may have all evolved into mothers and fathers or even grandparents in their own right, in my mind’s eye, they’re still frozen into that golden old time… when life was so much simpler then.
