My Game Boy

I read recently, "The days are long, but time flies" or something of that sort. As I contemplate turning 50 one month from today, I can definitely say that is the understatement of the year...or, more appropriately, the half century mark, if you will. I am not morbid about aging, and I don't have any unnatural feelings about it. I just really kind of sit here and shake my head at how fast it has all gone. 

One does not have to look far or hard to see how fast time has gone. Think back to your cell phone 5 years ago. Or consider the price of gas the first time you filled your car tank. Recall the dress code issues when you were in school. Find any little tidbit from your teenage years, and compare it to anything you see a teenager out there doing today. Time flies, and life evolves.

I will always be a bit of a technology buff, I believe, if I can continue to keep up with it. I will forever remember where I was the night Princess Diana died, because I was in my home "office" at my computer, a Compaq Presario All-in-One, with one disc drive in the front - a new ground-breaking 3.5" inch hard disk, which ushered in the farewell for the floppy disk. We paid $2,500 for that computer at Comp USA in Houston, and we were on the cutting edge to have a desktop computer at home. Now, mind you, this was all of 1994. Twenty years ago.

And the internet? As we knew it then, the internet existed as viewed from the portal through the parameters of AOL. We didn't even know the real internet. And accessing it? Dial-up baby. As in modem. As in nothing else could be going on communication wise. As in you had to have your phone line connected to the back of your computer and no phone talking could occur. It's funny to remember, and also kind of crazy to contemplate at the same time.

I bought that computer for my new working woman turned stay-at-home mom business. I was so proud of it. Business cards printed with my @aol.com email address, and the phone number that would ring if I wasn't out surfing AOL's news bites of the real world wide web. I do remember Kraft and Proctor and Gamble as being two of the companies that began ghosting their web address on the bottom left corners of their television commercials. And I also remember scoffing at why in the world anyone would ever need to know their dot com addresses. 

One of my tender memories, and I have the photo tucked away safely on a scrapbook page, is my oldest son, around 18 months old, standing on his tip toes, sippy cup in his left hand, and his right hand is extended up to the computer keyboard, and he is trying so hard to connect with that machine. I guess even back then he was wired a little like mom - interested in all things technology. 

Fast forward three years, and that little blonde boy that was so full of energy and light would be scampering around under my desk in a new house in a new city, hooking up the computer components, following the color codes on the peripherals to plug them in correctly. I can still see his little feet sticking out from the desk, his whole little body almost hidden underneath the desk and behind the tower. I had graduated at this point to a black Dell. Woot, woot.

It wasn't soon after this moment that I began battling this little tow-headed bundle of ideas for computer time. Yes, one computer in the house. He would want to play either Roller Coaster Tycoon, or his Tonka Construction game. I folded many loads of laundry to the sounds of either a dump truck backing up, or kids screaming as their coaster descended. If I were to hear either of those game sounds today, I would instantly be transported back to a house in San Antonio, where I fought the blacktopped barefoot imprints on beige berber like nobody's business.

Computer games gave way to Game Boy and Nintendo DS and then PlayStation 3...but somewhere along the way, the boy returned to a computer game. When we lived in McAllen, he and his classmates stumbled upon a game called RuneScape and he would play this game on the family computer that we had set up - that same Dell that had been with us in San Antonio was hanging in there, on its last leg.

For Christmas in 2001, my amazing husband gifted me with the first iPod, it having been released in October 2001. {So, think about that for a minute - the iPod isn't even 15 yet.} Well, I was taken completely by surprise! I had no idea he was getting this for me, and I set out immediately on Christmas Day afternoon to begin importing my CD's into this new software called iTunes. Well, like an 85-year-old on Jeopardy, that poor computer didn't stand a chance memory wise. And my poor husband didn't realize that the Christmas iPod would require a New Year's laptop. I love that man for so many reasons, but one near the top of the list is that he will indulge my technological cravings. Time after time.

I left Best Buy on New Year's Eve with a newfangled laptop, of all things, and began once again the transporting of all of my LIFE, including music and photos, onto the latest version of personal computing. The old Dell, with some life in it still, was relegated to my sons - and the oldest launched full fledge into his RuneScape games, often with his younger brother sitting at his side, content to watch the medieval questing and simulated life.

Over ten years, in three homes, on four computers, my oldest son has played RuneScape. I can understand it a little. I fought my own demon of addiction with Zoo Tycoon when the boys were in grade school. I finally had to quit the game altogether so there would be clean clothes in the drawers and food on the table. {And that reminds me of an aunt that was an avid video gamer in her seventies...maybe it's just in our gene pool...}

During Philip's last year of high school, he became more intentional about hanging out downstairs. I appreciated that so very much. It gave me so much joy to see him hunkered over his computer screen on the couch, or at the desk in the family room, or in one of my slipper chairs here in Scrap Central. He lived for the release of new quests and has now accumulated quite the collection of holiday regalia from ten years of completing activities on his RuneScape account. I like seeing what he's done with his character. I like seeing him figuring out how to do something. I like seeing him passionate about ideas. I like seeing him game. 

The quest goes on. He's in college now. I miss seeing him here, hanging out.  But in the young man now, with his sophisticated MacBook on his lap, I can in the blink of an eye go back in my mind to that little tow-headed boy, camped out on the bleached pine desk in my San Antonio study, backing up dump trucks and building houses on the old black Dell. It is a joy to watch your children grow and change. And it is a joy to see some character traits deepen and morph, much as the very pixels on our screen have. Yes, the days are long, but time flies. 

Ten Years on the Quest ~ Philip & RuneScape ~ March 2013

Sketch Credit: Scrapbook Generation

Paper: Carta Bella

Letter Stickers: Pink Paislee and Cosmo Cricket

You Can Never Have Too Much Happiness

My oldest sister bought a house built in 1913 in LaPorte, to turn it into a quilt retreat. Steve and I ran to Houston on Saturday for the day and spent the second half of it with my sister and her husband. Even though I have been following the progress on her blog, it was fun to see the house in person. As we finished up the exterior tour and headed into the house, I paused for a moment and looked toward the end of the porch and said to sister, "This porch reminds me so much of Granny's porch."

Our grandmother had a craftsman style home and on the big family gathering days, we children were relegated to the outdoors, as that was the best space left over to accommodate me, my siblings, and my 20-odd cousins. That porch was not only a long dining table, but also a grand castle, a steamship, a pirate island, a grocery store, a lookout tower...it had possibilities as endless as the summer days were long. The expanse of the covered porch and the placement of the house in relation to the sun's exposure guaranteed shade at all times and I don't recall it ever being a hot spot.

It grew in me, I guess, a deep respect and unshakeable adoration for a good 'ole porch. Having lived in Texas my whole life, I am savvy enough to know that if I want to be outside half of the year, I need to build or cultivate some kind of shade. We have been blessed - or cursed - to build from the ground up four houses. Each time, I have been meticulous in selecting the house, selecting the lot, working with the builder...and each time I have factored in the setting and rising sun and its impact on the house. 

When we built our current home, we absolutely lucked out. The silhouette of our home casts a complete shadow on the backyard every afternoon beginning around 4 p.m. It is really a sweet little treasure. In 2012 when we expanded our back porch by 1,000 square feet, we nixed plans to build an arbor, realizing it would cover up the view of the nighttime stars, and the house would give us the needed evening shade for gatherings and dinners.

We have really loved that back porch. It's a quiet escape in the morning to watch the sun come up, while you sip your snicker doodle coffee. It's a relaxing perch from which one can watch Truman chase rabbits during the day. It's an outdoor living room in the evening when we all come home from work and, previously, the boys from school, where we can sit and gather and soak in the freshness of the outdoors, which we all seem to love and need regular daily Vitamin D doses. A good day to me is one in which I have spent a good amount of time on my back porch.

When the boys were home and in their driving years, Sunday afternoons shifted from time spent with us to time spent with friends. It was a change we didn't relish, but it was one we could not fight. We could see the value in their development of community with friends from their youth group. The tectonic shift in how we spent the one day my husband almost always has off was one to which we did not easily adapt, but adapt we did. We considered it preparation for the looming college launch years. You loosen the strings long before you let them go.

The change in our together time made us appreciate the moments that we were together all the more. Sunday lunch shared every week can become common and more a process of remember whose turn it is to pick the entree. Sunday lunch shared 6-8 times a year becomes a treasured jewel, more about who you're with than where you are, the undisputed peak of the week. And usually, when the boys would eat lunch with us, they would not go back out. 

June 2013 began the countdown to Philip leaving. He nestled in with us more toward the end with deliberate cutting of local ties and, in my heart I believe, his own process of saying goodbye to the life he had known, as he hunkered down in his room more often than he had in a few years. It is interesting to contrast and compare their leaving processes now, but that is another story for another day. 

This sunny afternoon found us all together, and I happened to have my DSLR with me, knowing that this day together was one of those jewels. There is no grand story here. Just three of the photos I shot that day, capturing the vitality of my sons' beautiful faces, their penchant for sitting near each other, their endearing and effortless smiles. They are such a complimentary pairing. You could put them up against any classic - peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, Batman and Robin - and they could hold their own. They laugh so much together. They crack each other up. They crack us up, too. 

It has always been such a joy to see them interact. I have hundreds of photos of them laughing together. They are each precious to me. My only regret is not having the ability to capture their wit on paper, or video. I could not ever begin that undertaking - it would require me to record them constantly and they would never go for that. Mercy - getting a smiling photo of Andrew is a task that is daunting enough already. 

As I looked at photos on Sunday to scrap, these prints called out to me. And as I paired them with paper, this little Summer Fresh line seemed to be, like my boys, the perfect pairing. One of the little tags for the paper set proclaimed, "You can never have too much happiness." As I look at these boys laughing on my back porch, and smile and weep at the memory, I know that little tag nailed it. 

There will be more stories, more laughter, more moments together on the back porch. They will become jewels that are even more precious. As I FaceTime with my sons now in Nashville and in Denver, and try to glimpse their essence through all 27" of my iMac screen, I know it is true. You can never have too much happiness.

You Can Never Have Too Much Happiness ~ Back Porch Stories ~ June 2013

Sketch Credit: Scrapbook Generation http://scrapbookgeneration.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=213

Paper: Simple Stories, Cosmo Cricket