Reflection

Today, I attended a memorial for one of the “kids” we grew up with. We weren’t close as adults, as he was my brother’s age, but we all grew up together, and at one point, in private school, we were classmates. We carpooled together both as kids, and when I was a senior and he a sophomore in high school. FB helped us reconnect, and maintain the connection as neighbors. Today, at the memorial, seeing faces that I first met over 2 (and sometimes 3) decades ago brought me to realize how great we had it growing up in our little bubble on the peninsula. We didn’t know it at the time, but through sports and school, we had our own tight knit community, where the parents knew the parents just as well as the kids knew the kids. The parents were so much involved with each other that they knew the siblings as well, as in my case, since I was one of the few girls around, and not involved with the sports. The other parents were always “Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so,” and were just as interested in my life as they were my brother’s. Yes, we all grew up and did pursue our own careers, whether that meant going to college or straight to work. There was no judgement either way. It took seeing all of us come together to honor and celebrate the life of one of Belmont’s sons today to see that we were all the children of our city (and the neighboring adoptive city, as the towns were rivals, and then converged during high school). We’ve known Eric for over three decades, driven by his house every day, in and out, and it took this long to realize what we had. A neighborhood. A community. We all came together when it was most needed. The earthquake in 1989 was one example, as was the police-involved incident that broke out at school, closing it down for the remainder of the day in 1991. But with this magnitude of loss, it is completely apparent that in the end, we’re still that community. We still all gathered, parents and friends, to celebrate that life and his place in the community. Stitches at the face area are taken out after five or six days. online cialis continue reading description now As the drug is generic version of cialis tadalafil 50mg this medicine is a great way to fight of impotence. Finally, the kidney function can be greatly tadalafil viagra improved, so the high creatinine level will decrease. That being said, you may want to avoid meals that are high viagra online without prescription frankkrauseautomotive.com in fat as this can completely lessen erection. 6. My one friend from elementary school was my mom’s student before I’d even entered the picture. She taught him before I started going to the school and was friends with him.
Now that I’m a parent, I realize I am striving for the same for my own family. I want Brandon and Peyton to feel that sense of community in the area in which they live. To feel the connection with the families of their friends at school, their neighbors. We are slowly achieving that through our involvement in sports and with our school. I now appreciate the efforts our parents put toward establishing that bond for us in our community. A lot of work goes into creating that, and it seems even harder these days with so much on all of our plates. We’ll have to continue our involvement in our community to instill in the kids what we’d taken for granted back then.
I had wondered if I should attend today or not, since I didn’t get the invitation directly. I’d seen the notice on FB, but I didn’t want to self-invite. My brother had RSVP’d initially for my parents and himself, but I wanted to go. I am glad I did. I would have missed out on the opportunity to pay my respects, hug his parents, his brother, and have this realization and insight. Independently, to another attendee, my mom had also commented about how close the community was. We all felt the same way. Even though Danny became Dan, Jacob is now Jake, in some ways, we’re all still the same inside, deep down. And it took us to come together as a community again for me to realize this.