The one you forgot about that pulls you back to softer times

Every now and then you hear a song and there's that "oh, wow. . . . I forgot so-and-so recorded that." This is one of those songs for me. Re-introduced on a blog I read, I had to re-share. It's beautiful. It's summer and longing and those moments in time where we felt safest. No life-jading experiences, no realization yet that sometimes, although hope never dies, it changes unexpectedly and often not to our liking. Early in life, most of us subconsciously believed that hope was steeped in our own expectations and desires. As I grew older, I realized that hope is there; it just doesn't always result in the picture that I envisioned. 

There's beauty and wisdom in age. There's also loss, that knowledge of a far sweeter time in life, and now it's gone. Left in its place are memories that bring us happiness, but can also cause us to drown in the bittersweet of loss if we are not careful. I find myself at that road sometimes, looking behind me at the perceived smoothly-paved path that we often see through rose-colored glasses. It wasn't smooth, though. We've just chosen to remember the good stuff, and that's okay, sometimes. But it can be good to briefly remember the hard things that shaped and changed us, too. It's not fun, but everything we go through creates a definition of ourselves, the good and the bad and the in-between.

My mind and body responds to smells and places and food and funny, odd little dreams that pop up in my sleep and pull me back to the "long-ago." I don't stay there long. There's good and happiness and hope to be found looking at the way forward, just as much as there was in the long-ago. There's also going to be more loss and more of the hard things. But summer looms ahead, and with it comes more "stars lit up like candle lights" and beautiful, "sun-kissed skin." Even when summer ends, there is still the promise of that season to come again until we simply are no more.

Love to you on this 11th day of December. Hope can change and look very different from where we stand each and every day. The comfort is that it is there, sometimes buried deep, but it's there.

"I saw myself in summer nights
And stars lit up like candle lights
I made my wish but mostly I
Believed

And yellow lines and tire marks
Sun-kissed skin and handle bars
And where I stood was where I was
To be"