That Was Me Then.

Due to our move earlier this summer, our house has literally become a blank canvas. In a sense we have started over, and are trying to make our home feel and look like a home. Morgan is no longer living there, due to his new girlfriend taking him in, and my mother and I have found huge comfort in the simplicity of him not being there. Mainly decorating. We are going for a sophisticated romance, or my new favorite phrase "a beautiful indifference".

We have started with a bunch of family photos and put them into real picture frames and covered the walls with them. It is very refreshing to go over old photos and see pictures of who I was in respect to who I have become. One picture in familiar resonates in my mind, and has since become the center piece of our growing "wall of memories"

When I was a child we would go to a Japanese Steakhouse every year for my birthday. It was one of those places where they cook right in front of you throwing knives and food up in front of you, while a hot grill lay inches away from you. I could not get enough of it. It was the highlight of my birthday and most importantly the times I remember us all being together, eating and laughing and enjoying our time with each other. I say all of us because this was at a time when my grandmother, aunt, younger and older cousins Chris and Lloyd, my brother, mother and I all lived in the yellow house.

Those were very fun but crazy times, a full house of sorts that revolved around a toddler, two kids and pre-teen running around and trying not to drive three women crazy.

A house full of fighting, crying, laughter, and a mean dog named Tammy was like living in a zoo. From fall days, and fighting in leaves. Waiting at the bus stop for our ride to school, Halloween, Christmas parties and dealing with the array of characters in our neighborhood.

Summer mornings, trips to playland,swimming pools, and summer camps we were a house full of people with things to do, all running head on into one another.

So the yearly trips to the Steakhouse were much needed, they were the times when we were all decked out in our best clothing, and hopefully our best behavior for a night where we were all on the same path.

I can remember fighting with chopsticks, trying to ignore my drooling cousin, listening in on adult conversations and being dazzled by the flames before me. It was amazing, and it was all for me, not only the family dinner, but the love of the night.

At the end, since it was my birthday, they would throw in(meaning someone had to pay extra) a pineapple cake, which was literally piled up pineapples made to resemble a cake and then they would take a group picture of us. A snapshot of the event. Later they would glue the photo on a menu and give it to us.

Going through photos a while back I found that huge menu with our photo attached to it, and amazingly it spoke volumes of my life then and now.

In the photo:

My older cousin, brother, and I are sitting at the table. My brother looking off and distant as if he wished he was some where else. My cousins arm is around me, his smile mischievous while looking at the cake more that at the birthday girl. My Aunt is standing behind the three of us. Proud and in the center, with a huge grin on her face(and the hugest glasses ever) as she hold a drooling Christopher, who attention was glued on me. My grandma stands to the right of her. This strong presence from a little women. She is beaming at the camera, perhaps mid laugh, and surprisingly is the only picture I have of her smiling. My mother is to the left of my aunt, and looks fondly down at me, as if I am the pride and light in her life. She is almost leaning into me as if to kiss my forehead.

I of course am front and center, missing a tooth, but smiling anyway. I am wearing my favorite beauty and the beast outfit, with a red headband and long hair falling past my shoulders. I am in complete bliss, as everyone around, everyone I love, is near and close. That photo remains the only one of the seven of us. It remains one of my favorite memories.

That was me then. A lifetime ago but captured forever in rare photos. I wonder why it is so difficult to let go of those days. Why I still unrealistically yearn to go back to them. Maybe it's because there are days when you are reminded of it. A smell, an object, a beautiful rainy day like today, which make those memories seem like events that only happened yesterday. That remind you of the person you were.

I am struggling to be the person I can live with now, and it sucks to say that I wish it was the girl I was back that then.

How I'd like to return back to her.

Damn beautiful rainy days, where I want nothing more than to curl up in bed, fall to sleep and go back to that place. If only for a moment.