They're writing songs of love, but not for me

I glanced at the calendar in the kitchen today to see that my grandparents will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary this month. 73 years! How many people even live that long?

Curious, I dug through a box of photos, and found so many that had me smiling, and a few that made my heart sad, to see how youth has turned to old age, to see their faces and know just a little of how their lives were lived and what was in their hearts.

My grandmother, Festna, in 1942. She wrote everything on the backs of her pictures, and on this one she wrote: "Festna Lawrence, taken at the 2nd turn in the road from the house going toward Diamond Springs Elizabeth, Ark. Age 24. Taken in Baxter Co." I wonder what she found so fascinating about the rocks.

"Homer Lawrence, Pfc. Jewell L. Lawrence 37257154. Camp Shelby, Miss, just home on a furlough, from Alaska. Taken in June 1945 at Arthur Green's place at Beedeville Ark." My grandpa's the one on the left. The "L" stands for Lee, which is what he goes by. He would've been 32 in this picture.

Left: "Mrs. Festna Lawrence. Taken in 1945. I sent this to Lee while serving in the US Army in Germany." She's a large part Native American. Can you tell?

Right: My grandfather holding my mother, my uncle Curt on the left and my uncle Jerry on the right, in 1956.

My grandma married my grandpa when she was 17 to escape her abusive father, and my grandpa, at 22 and growing up with a hobo father who taught him how to jump trains, simply wanted someone to take care of his home. They were married 10 years before having any children, and while in France during WWII, my grandfather wanted to divorce my grandma for a woman he met in Paris. He didn't; I figured it out one summer sleeping in my mother's old room at my grandparents' house, and my uncle Jerry was born 9 months exactly after my grandpa returned home from the war.

I used to sit next to my grandpa on the couch and watch Wheel of Fortune with him, work on crossword puzzles, ride with him into town for a newspaper in his white pickup truck. I used to sit on the edge of his bed, his room smelling of mothballs and dust, as he finger picked "Silent Night" on his guitar. Now my grandpa, at 95 this August, doesn't remember who my mother is, or that he was ever in a war. I hate the time that passes.

so say goodbye

"You leave town for a couple of decades and they change everything." Or so says Phoebus from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I must say I agree with him. I don't know about you, but I have no idea how I lived in Marietta for 11 years without a Bar-b-Cutie. And what with the new Wendy's, I'm tempted to return to high school simply for the easy access. Except I think I'd rather eat fish out of the Ohio River than return to high school for anything. Who's up for an evening service at the new Nazarene church on Front Street? Afterwards we can eat Putnam chocolates and stare into the vacant windows of Brownies.

Isn't it silly the way time passes? Audrey's married and Gretchen's getting married and Erin's getting engaged and Annie's living on her own and Tanya's moving to Florida and Sarah's moving to Utah and I...I just sit back and watch all my friends disperse, write them letters in my head, wish they were sitting back with me around a campfire smelling summer like so many youth groups so many years ago. Playing football in the mud and sledding in the snow and chicken fights in the pool, sticking leaves in our hair while hiding from flashlights and illegally spraying our tents with bug spray, volleyball and frisbee golf and eating Tootsie Pops and playing Mac computer games....

And now what? How do so many years of being teenagers fade into adulthood? How do so many careless, barefooted romps through the grass turn into responsibly accepting your diploma into life?

I heave a huge sigh and sit back and watch. I'm always up for a campfire.

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

Time is an odd thing. I don't know if you ever noticed, but it doesn't stop. Thanksgiving was already two whole weeks ago. We are in the thick of the Christmas season. Lights are strung across mall ceilings and every department store plays "Deck the Halls" behind the voices of bustling Christmas shoppers. Sales! Pushy peddlers! Did you know the Leo diamond is the most beautiful diamond in the world? Or so says the nice gentleman at LeRoy's Jewelers who was either bored or really thought I had $6700 in my red polka-dotted purse to shell out on a sparkly ring (with 6 more cuts than a regular diamond! See how it glitters in the light? Uh, not really. Do you want to try it on? No, thanks. It looks better on! The only way I am putting that ring on is if Mel Gibson is offering it to me on one knee).

Monday I walked around a housing development at 9 o'clock, the cold air filtering through the knit of my gloves. I stopped in front of a house completely covered in white icicle lights as Frank Sinatra began singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" on my iPod. As I watched the house, I imagined cars pulling into the driveway and parking on the street, walking up to the door in knee-length coats and red gloves, a woman opening the front door in an apron and revealing a warm world lit with candles and smelling of gingerbread. Instrumental Christmas music flowed out of the house and voices rose in greeting as desserts were presented to the hostess as a thank-you offering. And as I stood there on the sidewalk, Frank Sinatra singing, "Through the years we all will be together," I thought about the Christmases past, with youth group and church and family. How different it'll be going home to a house I've only known for 4 days and a church who forgets my name.

Time is an odd thing. I never thought Thanksgiving would come, but it has, and is passed. Christmas break seems so far away, but in two weeks I'll be home with the semester behind me. Time keeps going. Sometimes I feel like something will never come or never end, yet somehow I end up on the other side of it looking back at it, wondering how I got through it. I just can't wait to be on the other side of this semester. TWO MORE WEEKS!