Life Got In The Way

A undelivered Pampered Chef order languishes in my living room. A much anticipated theater project that has to be withdrawn from. Seeing cousins for the first time in thirty years. When did life get in the way?

I prided myself in the past of being able to multi-task with the best of the best but now I find myself more and more not being able to work that extra two hours or schedule multiple appointments. I find this new life distressing.

How did I let thirty years go by and not keep up with the close contact with my cousins that I dreamed I would do. At seventeen, leaning on my cousin Brian who helped me through a devastating event, I made the promises I was so sure to keep that I would never forget and always keep in touch. That we would remain best of friends. How empty that promise seems to me now. Gazing across the dinner table at Brian, I felt such deep sadness that I did not keep that promise. I regretted that I did not remain the “best of friends” with this amazing man. How shallow I must have appeared.

How do we as adults try to keep everything afloat in our lives when so many events, problems, and issues seem to keep us from the very things we enjoy the most. How could I have moved from crisis to crisis and find that the simple moments were brushed aside? Oh sure I can justify that I needed to spend the time as a mother to my boys who took up such amazing chunks of my life or that I needed time to find the real Chooch while stumbling across my own personal roadblocks.

But it all boils down to one statement. My life got in the way. Simple. Straightforward and somewhat self-absorbed as it is, the glaring truth is that we cast away our youthful promises on loftier pursuits. We need to make our money, establish our careers, raise our children to only toss them out on the world so that they too can experience the same wrapped up moments.

I didn’t expect when I had all my cousins around me that I would travel back to my seventeen year old days. I didn’t expect that it would seem just yesterday that I was sneaking that illicit Kools while pouring my heart and soul out. But now I know that I can’t afford to let my life get in the way. I must maintain contact of a more personal nature then just the occasional Christmas greeting or uninvolved email. I need my cousins. I need them in my life more than I ever would have imagined.

So even though I didn’t share my crazy youth, subdued thirties or my early discovering forties, I can go forth knowing that I have discovered a new set of friends in my cousins and that will enrich my life, which won’t get in the way.