Three Dog Night- Blogmas Day 2
I’m only 44, but I married and started a family young. When I used to think about a day where my children would live elsewhere, it made me a little sad. Obviously, I want them to spread their wings and all the other cliches but, so far, being a mother has been the highlight of my life. (I don’t know what all these people re-living high school glory days are thinking.) Babies are where it’s at.
Once in a while I’ll be walking into the grocery store and remember when I’d hold their little hands to cross the parking lot. And then as they got older they’d protectively grab mine first, or each others’, any time we crossed a street. It’s all those little pack animal moments that I craved when I was a teenager. I think I really loved being steeped in them as a young adult.
And I totally indulged in them, which is great because I needed to tank up before they moved away. This fall, my youngest child moved to live on campus. I wasn’t sure what life would be like for my husband and I. Would he play video games while I knitted and listened to podcasts every night, each in our own little world? Would we walk our dogs together like we kept saying we would once the craziness of senior year and soccer games passed? Would we get on each other’s nerves? I mean it’s not like we are retirement age, but we are around each other with more undivided attention than ever before since we first married.
Last night my husband took me out to eat and to a concert. Dates used to be a super big deal when we were young because we had no babysitters and no spare cash. They didn’t happen all that often. Going whenever and wherever we feel like is something new, since there’s no soccer games or group likes and dislikes to consider. So we ate out at Suga’s (Its gourmet southern.) before a concert. I live a bland dairy, wheat, and sugar free existence daily so that I can splurge there once in a while and not feel like crap the next day.
Anyway, we were eating on the patio and my husband asked how I thought this “new era” was going. I wan’t sure. I mean, it’s only been two months and my father passed away during that time, so I don’t think I can analyze anything yet, but it got me thinking. I have spent zero time dreaming about older married life. I had no “empty nest” plans for myself and my husband, other than camping trips and maybe, eventually, a new pop-up camper to do it in. As I considered what my perfect couple life would look like, I realized we do a lot of it already. I like the way we spend our time. Some of it is old stuff: getting coffee once or twice a week and talking or walking our dogs in the evenings when it’s cool. We still like the same tv shows and look forward to watching them together, though I haven’t felt like I could take the emotion of This Is Us the last couple of months. But some of it is new, like reading some of the same books and praying together daily.
More than that, a peace has settled over our home in the last year or so. It has nothing to do with growing kids, it’s just my processing the loss of my grandparents and discovering some things about myself and how I relate to other people. So, it’s quiet here, but I am not afraid of that. And at some point during the day I can always crank up my turntable and shatter the silence with whatever music I feel like. Getting older isn’t so bad.
Speaking of turntables, I only have a couple of Three Dog Night albums and I’d never say I was their greatest fan, but their songs that I love- I really, really love. Black and White is one of my all time favorites included on the 1000 song playlist, with the genius name, “Michelle’s Songs.”
Apparently, getting older has been good for them too. Danny Hutton is like 76 now but their show had such an upbeat, positive vibe you wouldn’t know it. We had fun with all the other graying and silver fans. Because I love you, I’ve uploaded some clips of the show with poor image quality.
