We are born when we should be...
Taught what we need to survive the years of our lives...

Looking back, we wear rose-colored glasses and only see what we miss. We miss the laughter and easy-going times when others made all of our choices. What you could wear because they bought our clothes. What we ate because they paid for and made our food.

We longed for a time when we had the freedom to make all our own choices in life. How much easier things would be then.

We talked long into the night about what we would let our children do. We realized young adults were intelligent and knew it all. We didn't need parents telling us old stories about how it was. We lived the present. Screw the past. The NOW was all we cared about.

We fell in and out of love; it was the late 1970s. You wanted a drive home? You knew who could get you safely there, or you learned to walk fast through the night, taking shortcuts over creeks and through woods to get home to set your dirty laundry out so it could get washed while you slept.

All you really wanted was someone to love you for who you were. A guy that danced was just icing on the cake. You were smart. You were almost twenty. What more in this life did you need to learn that you hadn't already?

You made love to the dream of the perfect life with the ideal person by your side.

One marriage, two, and a child in between set you on your life course without knowing it was happening. You can not regret anything, or you wouldn't have your heart walking around as a blond-haired smiling kid everyone loves, just not quite as much as you did.

It was worth every tear to hear your name, mom, spoken from the other room.

Time then speeds up. It was gone in a flash. Your joy walked out the door. You had no idea you could feel so empty inside the day the bus drove away.

Now you find time, which is harder and harder to come by, to get together just to be in the same room with them. It doesn't matter what you talk about. You just want to hear your child's voice echoing off the quiet walls again.

Soon you find your new routine. It lacks the spark once there, but you are getting tired now. You have come to terms with the changes to your life and carry on...

Wondering, always wondering, if you are getting near the end of life's dance.