Nostalgia

This time of year is always bittersweet. It brings back so many memories, and I am grateful for all of the good ones we have of the years with our sons, those years when they were children and Christmas was magical, when their problems were small and we could actually handle them and really help. Those years when there was someone with young bright eyes to appreciate the Christmas decorations and help make the cookies and Norwegian Christmas bread, to sing the carols and anticipate the fun of Christmas Eve.

There's enough nostalgia in the air already, but it seems lately there are more reminders everywhere. Last Monday we went out to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse, and I remembered our years in Japan, the boys trying Japanese food, taking them to Japanese restaurants here.

Then, when I was driving home, the car on my left for a long time in a traffic jam caused by an accident was a silver RX8 like Leif's, like he was there accompanying me home.

Today, we went to the German American Chorus Christmas concert. I sang with this group for six years until their rehearsal time conflicted with Mom's retinology appointments. They sang German Christmas carols and I remembered the years we lived in Nurnberg and Sachsen bei Ansbach and Peter Anthony sang with the Sachsen Kinderchor, and how much he loved listening to Andrea Jurgens singing carols. I got tears in my eyes remembering and missing those days gone by.

We are fortunate that we had all those years together, that our memories bring them back. I miss my boys. I miss Leif. But I am grateful.
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This photo was taken on July 4, 1976 in Manhattan, Kansas, in our old stone house. Leif is on the right.

What's the Matter With Saturdays?

The last two Saturdays, Peter has been down in the dumps, very nostalgic, missing the family we once had. I felt that way, too, Saturday before last. Didn't even want to get out of bed. I'm glad that feeling of sadness didn't last pervasively for me, and I wonder what was the trigger. Why Saturdays? After all, we are retired and Saturday really isn't much different than any other day of the week for us.

I think after a couple of weeks, I may have figured it out, or at least what came to make some sense to me. In those years when we were raising our boys, Saturday was often a day we did something special together, some kind of outing we all enjoyed. Peter and I weren't working on Saturday, so it was family time. What we did depended on where we were living at the time. In Germany, it was Volksmarching, six mile hikes in towns all over southern Germany.

In Japan, it was the Saturday bus trips to some interesting destination in Japan, or soccer games at Camp Zama (the boys playing; one year, Peter W. coaching), or a train trip to somewhere like Machida for shopping, Tokyo, or Kamakura.

In Hawaii, it was likely to be either beach day, going to Bellows Beach and then to Bueno Nalo for quesadillas and Dave's Ice Cream for the marvelous coconut macadamia nut ice cream, or down to Waikiki for dinner, a movie, and playing games at the video game parlor.

In Chicago, we might have gone to a museum, or something like a car show, or walked down to Lake Michigan, or many other things we did there. And in Puerto Rico, going to Old San Juan, the beach, or trips around the island.

Even after the boys were grown, it was Sunday evening that Leif was likely to be at our house for dinner, so that was associated with the weekend, too.

None of those things happen now, but I think there's a nostalgia for it, for those times we were together. I think we are both finding time, in a way, to think about this more now that we aren't traveling as much and having company. The distractions aren't there. We are refocusing inward.

I do miss that family we had when the boys were young and their problems were small, when they were beautiful, handsome children who made us see the world through new eyes.

My Leif was always the climber. If there was something to climb on, he'd climb it. Rocks, stumps, trees, walls, hills, anything he could go UP. Always up. He could skip around on things like a billy goat with no fear.

This photo of him on a huge stump was taken in Scheffau, Austria in August 1979 when Leif was four-and-a-half years old. He was glorying in having gotten up there and was surveying the world from above our heads. Of course, being "mom" I was worried he'd get hurt, but he wasn't worried in the least, and he got safely down without any assistance. How I wish the other things in his life had been so easy to "get down" from.

Nostalgia, Remembrance, Gratitude, Wishing

Finding Leif's photo albums, the two he actually put together (as opposed to a bunch of loose photos from his army days, mostly of people we don't know) not only brings back a lot of memories but shows me new things about Leif and what he chose to photograph. Even as a young teen he was photographing himself, though not as much as he did in the last few years of his life. I don't know for sure whether he placed his camera on something and used the timer on these two or whether he had someone there with him who took them, but I'm pretty sure neither Peter W. nor I took them, or even saw them before.

These were taken the the back yard of our house (army quarters) in Puerto Rico, and I probably should have known about them and scanned them to post when I was writing about that house and yard. Now they'll have to stand on their own.

These were taken around February 1991, or at least that's when the roll of film was developed, so Leif was sixteen years old in these photos. In the one where he is far from the camera, it looks like he is swinging the machete he used to help keep the jungle under control around there. In the one where he is posing leaning back against a palm tree, you can see the same outfit closer up. He dressed in fashion and in fashion fads in those days, with his purple shirt and deliberately ragged jeans, the kind with narrow ankles.

Tonight Peter W. and I were having dinner in Brandon and he said he felt very nostalgic for all the times we have shared, and that he wondered whether we would ever have dinner in Brandon without remembering the times we did so with Leif. I said I didn't think so, and that I think of him in every room of our house. Even the car we were driving was hand-picked for us by Leif. We talked about the years and times in so many places and how fortunate we were to have each other and our sons. He said that when we are young, we don't really appreciate what we have because we are so busy trying to get ahead, make a secure future for our family and ourselves, and that he wishes we could go back and do it over.

I suppose in a sense we don't really appreciate everyday life because it is everyday. We don't know how special it is until it's gone. I can share the nostalgia with him, and and looking at photos of Leif or photos he took, and thinking about all this every day for the blog certainly brings home to me how much we had and what a great loss we have suffered. Yet we are still fortunate to have had so many good years, to have had two brilliant and handsome sons, to have each other, to have seen so much of the world.

In another sense, though, I did know how good I had it, how special our lives were. That's why I took so many pictures, trying to save all those memories, trying to preserve something of those feelings, and I am so immensely grateful not only for the experiences and the family, but for the photos and the memories.

It is both joyous and sad to remember it all, joyous because it was so good, sad because Leif is gone. Tonight Peter said it still doesn't seem real or possible that he's dead. We know it is true, but it seems as though it just can't be so.

I wish, oh how I wish, he were still here!