The Good Old Days

August 26, 2016

Do you remember the Sesame Street show Here is your life? That is what it is like living where you grew up. In the Trader Joe’s produce aisle, at the 5 and 10, Sunday mass, the ice cream parlor. You round a bend and there is your best friend from 2nd grade, a mother from your old neighborhood, your 7th grade basketball coach. Everywhere a memory, everywhere nostalgia.

Everyone’s favorite host, Guy Smiley

Kids, I will say, do remember… and they smile and say hello. And I look at my friend’s children, and they look at mine. At the ages when we used to play, on swing sets, riding bikes through the neighborhood, playing ghost in the graveyard at night with the light retreating, adding to the thrill and mystery.

Why do they call it the Good Old Days my oldest asks. And when I fumble trying to describe the attachment to youth, and innocence, and it maybe it isn’t that the time is that much better, it’s that we were better. And then she says, I think I get it Mom. It’s like you remember being a kid, and when you are a kid, everything is the good old days. Exactly.

And later that night, having dinner with old friends, we visited the graveyard that ran along the houses beside theirs. An old cemetery with old Philadelphia names. This city with roots, and families that span generations to generations to generations. This city has history, families are histories. Our histories.

Walking past marble, and stone, with loving husband, and faithful wife, long lives, and many too soon. Seize the day boys, I hear Robin Williams whisper, we are food for worms. I show my son Richie Ashburn’s grave. 2 baseballs placed on top which I wouldn’t dare disturb. He picks one up and tosses it nonchalantly into the air. A ballplayer will pick up the ball, paying homage to a baseball great. And as he places it back, I think, this is who life belongs to, those who pick up the ball and play. Seize the day boys. Seize the day.

Here is your life. This is Good Old Days.

Written by Mary Kate O’Malley